Forgetfulness

I forgot to blog yesterday. Just forgot. Did you miss me?

I procrastinate about some things. Having my hair cut. Polishing my shoes (my Dad would be sorely disappointed!). Cutting my finger and toe nails.

I cut my finger nails on Sunday. Yesterday I noticed that I had not done so for the second finger on my right hand.

How do you do that? Trim the nails on two thumbs and seven fingers, and forget the eighth?

D. was very upset at Res. House yesterday. He came to me in a bit of a panic. “There’s a guy out there”, he said, “reading in Arabic or Hebrew”. “It scares me“, he added.

I tip-toed behind the reader. He was reading from the Jewish Scriptures. I could not be certain whether he was translating from Hebrew (on the right hand side of the pages), or reading from English (on the left hand side).

I assured D. that it was O.K. to read in Hebrew (the original language of what Christians call The Old Testament), or even in Arabic.

D. was not convinced.

My Bank now has “greeters” - people who are assigned to welcome customers. My greeter yesterday was a lovely Hispanic woman named Lucy.

I asked if she knew that her name means “light”. She did, and asked my how I knew. I said a bit about Santa Lucia and the Scandinavian celebration of her. Lucy had never heard about this.

Then we chatted about “Lucy” being rooted in the Latin “Lux” (meaning light), and other cognates such as “lucid” and “elucidate”.

The teller (cashier in U.K.) called me and we dealt with my transaction .

Then a remembered another cognate: “Lucifer”. (S)he was the “fallen” Angel of Light.

On my way out of the Bank I asked Lucy if she knew about Lucifer. She did, but she had never connected that name with her own.

“Lucifer” is also identified as the bright and morning star.

It was a neat encounter with my Bank’s greeter.

I forgot to tell Lucy that matches were once known as “Lucifers”.


Lux et Pax.