Month: July 2024

I know I am the daughter of Robert L. Hanson when my mind wanders to words in strange and playful ways that probably seem weird to the rest of the world, but which I find very entertaining.

For some reason this morning I started thinking about words that end in “ist”.

For some words, the suffix “ist” indicates a person who does, makes, practices, or is an expert in something, such as in the words “realist”, “artist”, and “pianist”.

But for certain words, “ist” indicates someone who specifically practices prejudice or discrimination, as with the words “racist”, “sexist” or “ableist”.

But what if all “ist” words followed the logic of the second group of words rather than the first? Then we would come up with words like the following:

People who discriminate against teeth are dentists.
A person who doesn’t like butts is an assist.
Someone who doesn’t like certain internal body parts is an organist.
A person who hates endings is a finalist.

Yes, I know it’s silly and wrong (grammatically speaking), but just going down this road of thought sent me into peals of delight-laughter.           

My father, who sometimes signed his letters “Robber Tell Hand Son”, would understand.             

I just posted a song that I wrote a year or two ago.

When I first moved to Lacey, I met a person named Kahlei (is that the spelling?), and it made me think of the Lewis Caroll poem “Jabberwocky”.

I thought it might be fun to turn that poem into a song for children, but I had forgotten that it features a beheading.

As someone who has gone through Jungian therapy, I can appreciate the symbolism of decapitating a monster. But as someone who knows children are still developing their capacity for figurative thinking, I wondered if it was an appropriate subject matter for kids.

So I decided to rethink Caroll’s world a bit. His poem addresses bravery, and making a parent proud through skill and decisive action.

In my rethinking, the child’s bravery comes in forming his own opinion instead of automatically accepting the prejudices of his father. The child’s decisive action comes in the form of whole-heartedly accepting another person. And the father’s pride comes from knowing that his child is developing the ability to see the truth with his own eyes.