Letters

June 24th, 2008 • Related • Filed Under

When I think about the random things that shaped my childhood, I fear interacting with the Pink Tornado, because I worry an idle comment from me will affect her forever.

When I was in kindergarten, we had posterboards that anthropomorphized letters. The consonants were male, the vowels and Y were female (that always pissed me off.) Each letter had a personality and a story.

I don’t remember any of the stories, but I do remember that ever since then, I’ve grown up with certain prejudices about letters.*

  • Some letters are inherently funny: F, K, Z
  • Some letters are just cool, and if you have them in your name, you get cool points: X, Q, V
  • P is a wuss of a letter, and even to this day my first thought when thinking of alphabetical order is to look for P after R, because it doesn’t deserve to be before R. I mean, yeah, when I’m singing the song, I know where to put P, but if I’m just thinking of where the P books are in the library, I may look after R until I remember….
  • R is a solid, proud letter, a perfect precursor to the might is that is S.
  • T is somewhat bumbling, but still strong. Like a basketball center who’s not lithe enough to be a guard. It is the perfect follower to S.
  • LMNOP is the perfect name for a sorority, and if my school had had one, I would have joined.

That’s it for now. If I think of any more, I’ll be sure to tell you more of my strange prejudices regarding letters.

*I just realize Wheel of Fortune could have contributed to this, as well.

There Are 8 Responses So Far. »

  1. Comment by corwin on 24 June 2008:

    For me, it was Schoolhouse Rock and the numbers that had the biggest effect. To this day, I find 8 both depressed and depressing, all thanks to their little cartoon with the music in a minor key.

  2. Comment by Kaa on 24 June 2008:

    Hey, Mur, could this show have had anything to do with that?

  3. Comment by Laieanna on 24 June 2008:

    Another example of letters with personality is the tv show “The Letter People.” That could have some influence on your thinking, if you watched it. Personally, they creep me out…to this day.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Letter_People

  4. Comment by Laieanna on 24 June 2008:

    Ha! I just started looking at the wikipage and the consonants were males and vowels females. I think your teacher was influenced by the show or just ripped straight from it.

  5. Comment by Jessica on 24 June 2008:

    When I was in high school I came up with the “Letter Hierarchy”:

    A and I are the strongest letters in the alphabet because both of them are words all by themselves.

    Then there’s all the other letters…

    Then there’s Q, because it is completely dependent upon U.

    This mostly stemmed out of my love of the letter Q and how I felt so bad for it, not being able to stand on its own.

  6. Comment by Pavlina on 24 June 2008:

    Errr, I think i missed the bus. :)

  7. Comment by Dani in NC on 24 June 2008:

    This made me think about how I interact with my kids. Most of the memorable stuff in my childhood wasn’t introduced to me by my parents; I discovered it on my own. Still, I can’t seem to leave well enough alone. I keep wanting to steer my kids toward stuff that I think is cool. Then I start to worry because my kids are starting to turn out more like me and less like their father.

  8. Comment by Timothy on 23 July 2008:

    I’ve already given up on the fear of warping my 4 year old daughter; it’s inevitable. There’s too much stacked against her. Early on she learned about death as I tried to raise chickens. I’m a bit embarrassed about the body count and the number of times we had to go to the feed store to replace a dead chicken. Which of course prompted my daughter to ask me if when I died she would get a new daddy. Yup, already warped her sense of death as the final frontier. Death means going to the store and getting a replacement.

    And of course, two nights ago she was asking me about vaginas (we try to use proper terms in stead of boy parts/girl parts) So what did dear geek dad do? Yup, got out the Human Body encyclopedia (I wasn’t about to try to use the internet for THIS subject!) opened it to the cross section / transparent woman overlay, and told her about reproductive cycles in about the most benign and pedestrian tones imaginable while stumbling through it, sweating bullets and praying that she wouldn’t ask any questions. Lucky for me my wife came in a few minutes into it and saved the day by talking to her about ovaries. I made a hasty exit downstairs for a beer.

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