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Hi — I loved these lines from a book review I read the other day:

“Years ago, I tutored high school students writing college admissions essays. The joke around this work was just don’t let them write about grandma dying. Except, of course, for one caveat: If the kid could make a grandma-dying essay work, there was no greater proof they could write.”

This inspired me to take five minutes out of my life to write about this dictionary.

Here’s what I came up with:

There’s an old dictionary sitting on my desk. I found it on the street about a year ago and took it home like a stray cat. This book, in theory, contains every single word in the English language. This is astounding. Can any other book make this claim? Can any cat?

It’s a hardcover Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Edition. The cover, I’d imagine, is made of some kind of cardboard, but the cardboard is wrapped with a fibrous red material. The material feels like it was woven. It is, I think, the most beautiful shade of red I’ve ever seen. It shows its age the way an old rug does. The lettering is gold. When the dictionary is closed, the stacked edges of the pages come together to create a pattern of red paint specks on an offwhite canvas. 

It’s an extraordinarily dignified object. Dictionary.com could never.

I hope you pick an object in your home and do the same.

And last call on the most recent prompt — next one drops in 36 hours.

Share your response

Best,

Jasper