It’s a commonly held dictum amongst my peers that a writer
should write. I’m a writer, a novelist by trade. Today that means more than
stories. It means blogs, tweets and Facebook chatter, among other social media
venues. I’ve resisted for years. Email and Facebook have been my only forays
into the world of cyber communication, but perhaps it’s time for me to jump in.
So here I am, at A Flippancy Floppancy,
for anyone who might be perusing the blogosphere and happen upon my humble
offerings, which shall be eclectic and erratic. I have no theme, except the
random thoughts and memories that drift across my mind.
Why Flippancy
Floppancy? What does that mean? Indulge me while I share a bit of my
childhood.
My maternal grandfather was a dapper little Englishman. He
stood five feet four inches tall, had a short, gray flattop haircut and a gray
bristle-brush mustache. He chuckled a lot, which reminded me of cooing pigeons.
Most days he dressed in properly creased slacks, a collared, button down shirt
and a sweater vest and he sported a pocket watch, which he consulted often.
Born in 1886, Grandpa was a product of the Victorian era.
Manners and gentility were important. When dining with friends, excellent
manners included proper speech. And my grandfather was always proper, though
with a twinkle in his snappy, dark eyes.
In the article, Among the Old Words, http://www.jstor.org/stable/454570, Frederic G. Cassidy of the
University of Wisconsin noted: “Proper speech being an appurtenance of good
manners, they composed, and taught their children, certain formulas of polite
expression fitting to such social situations as they were liable to encounter.
They knew well that informality is notoriously untrustworthy, that the spur of
the moment can urge a speaker to disastrous infelicities. Far better to be
prepared, to have an appropriate formula fall trippingly off the tongue.
Imagine, for example, the dinner guest who, having partaken of everything in
sight, is being plied by his hostess to stuff himself further. Smiling
assuredly, he replies, “No thank you. I have had a genteel sufficiency—any more
would be superfluity.” The occasion is met, the temptation resisted, and the
formula has attested to the propriety of the guest’s upbringing.”
Perhaps due, in part, to my grandparents’ genteel manners
and delightful quirks, I have become a lover of language, of manners and of
history.
Grandfather Fox was a Renaissance Man: a Quaker preacher, a scholar,
theologian, a man of letters—primarily to the San Diego Union Letters to the
Editor column and to politicians, and a philanthropist who was instrumental in fundraising
for the Humane Society and the Good Will in San Diego. He was born to medical
missionaries in Madagascar, raised in Scotland, then immigrated to America by
working his way across Canada as a cowboy, then coming into the United States
through Washington State.
When we would eat a meal with grandpa, he had interesting
habits, like lining peas up on his knife, and drinking his tea out of a saucer.
He would tuck his cloth napkin into his shirt collar, and when he finished, he
would remove the napkin, dab at his mouth and mustache, sit back and declare
the meal was a flippancy floppancy,
or a sufficiency floppancy (he used
the two interchangeably). That was his proper speech to indicate he was full,
and he couldn’t eat another bite, thank you very much.
My life has been a satisfying flippancy floppancy. Always
filled with plentitude to the point of overflowing. That is not to say always
easy or pleasant. Hunger can be assuaged with liver and onions or gruel, as
well as turkey and gravy and pumpkin pie. But I’m a glass-half-full sort of
person. I tend to ac-centuate the
positives and e-liminate the negatives.
So, welcome. I hope today brings you a flippancy floppancy.
And I hope my musings bring some pleasure, some nostalgia, some food for
thought and some inspiration to those who stop by from time to time. Blessings, ~ Sunni
