Singer, Ron

English

Digital Commons @ Butler University

Pocketbook Money Keys     (a double sonnet)  Ron Singer  That, according to my doting mother (and this in the days before her dotage), was my first, connected utterance, and, according to me, who taught Linguistics, was an instance of telegraphic speech. If, as she said, I said it at ten months, it would, indeed, have shown the precocity of her ten-month darling, for “normally” telegraphy occurs between eighteen  and thirty-six (months). Since Science declares that telegraphy, or the “two-word” stage, typically combines a verb with a noun, my three-noun string must be an outlier. Never mind! The phrase remains iconic  --or, at least, a phrase I don’t forget, as I embark upon my own dotage. The reason I remember it, perhaps, is that it’s fixed in long-term memory. But, soon, I’ll need devices to keep me  from losing my “pocketbook, money, keys,” which, themselves, morph into devices: aps. Since the memory-theater method, where symbolic places and objects evoked huge swaths of learning, no longer works, I depend (as does my wife) on lists, and on strict placement of essentials: pills. I lay them out on the kitchen table. The trick is to tell intention from act. 

Pocketbook Money Keys

https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5755&amp;context=wordways

Pocketbook Money Keys

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