Lovage

The Words:

Serendipity, Paradox, Serenade, Senility, Calcification, Paraphernalia, Obnoxious, Paradigm, Rendezvous, Lovage, Merticulous

**

"What's a ren-dez-vous?"

The child looking up at me is the obnoxious one.

"It's a French word you don't need to understand right now. Right now, young man, you're supposed to be sitting in your seat and coloring."

He shrugs as if I am nothing of import, but he goes back to his seat. I sighed a little in relief. I don't know why I am here...

I went to college thinking it would do me good, thinking it might be the door to some sort of serendipity. I was a decent student, if you count an undergrad theses on the paradox of Dr. Faustus being a paradigm of the thirst for knowledge and the sold soul decent, and I wanted to go on.

But I carry paraphernalia. I carry too much. Life came like a blasting serenade and left me with a mother's senility, a debt which even my meticulousness would never be repaid in this life, and a brother whose self-pity was like calcification in pots.

I feel a tug on my sleeve and look down to see obnoxious again.

"What is lovage?"

"Lovage?"

"Yeah."

"I think you made that word up!"

"No. I don't think so! I think you have too much of it!"

And with that he goes back to his desk.

Lovage.

Of all things a child could notice in me...