JOY ALONG THE WAY: CONTINUING EDUCATION FRAZZLES A DICTIONARY

Although he doesn't know it, columnist George Will is the chief motivator of my continuing education.

Reading, for me, is like skipping blithely along mental pathways bordered by fragrant flowers with colorful butterflies fluttering about, birdsong at its best and blue skies above. But, every once in a while there is a "rock" in this happy reading trail, in the form of an unfamiliar word.

I can either jump over this "rock" and continue my "walk" or stop and go to the dictionary. The latter is the usual case, which takes me longer to read Will's column than any other.

George must have the largest vocabulary of any columnist or the hugest thesaurus from which he uses the lesser known word as a substitute for the more common one. Maybe he deliberately wishes to come up with the less familiar to test our reading achievement. Maybe it is his contribution to the field of Continuing Education as indicated above.

Strolling along this happy reading path, I bumped into the word, Sisyphean. At the risk of displaying my ignorance, I must confess it sent me to the dictionary. Maybe this word had sent me to the dictionary a long time ago, but many words have gone under the bridge in the decades I've been reading and this one must have been cast upon the bank and forgotten.

Anyway, I learned that Sisyphus of Greek mythology was a cruel king of Corinth condemned forever to roll a huge stone up a hill in Hades only to have it roll down again on nearing the top and having to do it all over again, somewhat like washing dishes, making beds, mopping, dusting, although the latter not quite so strenuous. Maybe. Sisphean is the adjective to describe Sisyphus's task.

With my new education I will now refer to my weekly work as Sisyphean. Away with the common Herculean!

Back to the reading path through George Will's column. Same column. I bumped into the word, fungible. Another word that, if ever encountered, lies drying, or already dried up, on some river bank of former education. Encountering it for the first time or re-encountering it, I tried to make it out by myself. Fungible? A person that is capable of having fun? A person prone to a fungus? Something that looks like a mushroom? If any lawyers are reading this, I know you're laughing because I subsequently learned it is a law word meaning "being of such a nature or kind that one unit or part may be exchanged or substituted for another equivalent unit in the discharge of an obligation."

None of my fumbling with fungible made sense if substituted for the word as George was using it. So, again to the dictionary.

I had to laugh when I realized that I had handled fungible things all my life. If neighbor, Bess Stacy, came over to borrow a dozen eggs because she had run out of them due to a big party, in a few days she would bring back a dozen of like eggs or the equivalent thereof. Fungible eggs!

George wasn't talking about fungible eggs. He was talking about the flow of drugs into our country. As soon as a kilo of drugs is seized, another of like value springs up as a replacement. As soon as a drug kingpin is caught and arrested, he is replaced with like kind,

How much happier it is to deal in fungible eggs, an acre of land here for a same valued acre somewhere else, $2.05 for a day's supply of gas and electricity.

What next, George? Homozyous? Yegg? Zloty?

REJOICE!

~Jean Bell Mosley is an author and longtime columnist for the Southeast Missourian.