Younger Son noticed that the little statue of Medusa, which he was going to paint and use in an Overly Complicated Board Game, had a muscular tail that hung down below her feet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHmmm,\u201d said Elder Son. \u201cHow will she stand up?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cShe needs a plinth,\u201d I piped up. Usually, I remain stoically mute when they talk about games, because I have no idea what they are talking about. Their conversation rises above the level of dialect; it\u2019s a more of a patois of English.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But I had been subconsciously waiting for a long time to trot out the word \u201cplinth.\u201d Plinth is one of those single use words that means only one very specific thing; that is, a special base for a statue to stand on. It\u2019s a well-rested word, unlike \u201cget\u201d or \u201cput,\u201d neither of which get many chances to sit down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now, mind you, most plinths are large; some hold life-size replicas of humans; others, horses. In this case, it was obvious that my boys would need something tiny that would serve the same purpose on a small scale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I weighed in again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSpool,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They both turned to look at me. \u201cSpool?\u201d they said almost in unison.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSure,\u201d I said. \u201cA sewing-thread spool. I\u2019ll see if I have any that are close to empty.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And sure enough, I found one. In honor of the game, I wound the remaining thread onto another partial spool, and proudly presented my son with this prize.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now mind you, I seem to remember throwing out a bunch of spools not too long ago. Just goes to show, you never know what might be useful. And Murphy\u2019s Law, Section III, Article 5, Subsection 3 states that you never find a use for things like that until after you have thrown them away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But at least now the lovely Medusa has a suitable perch from which to work her magic spells.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
******************<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For your further edification: What\u2019s the difference between a dialect and a patois? And how do you pronounce patois?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Younger Son noticed that the little statue of Medusa, which he was going to paint and use in an Overly Complicated Board Game, had a muscular tail that hung down below her feet. \u201cHmmm,\u201d said Elder Son. \u201cHow will she stand up?\u201d \u201cShe needs a plinth,\u201d I piped up. Usually, I remain stoically mute when […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-musings-about-language-and-life"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1571"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1571\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1573,"href":"https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1571\/revisions\/1573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}