Willy-Nilly, Silly Blog

(A special nod to my friend Terry for inspiring this blog with a handful of random words.  Can you pick out all eight?)

My friend Terry and I have a relationship of words.  We see each other rarely these days, but keep in touch through a continuous volley of emails.  Terry is remarkably clever; in another life he was probably a stand-up comedian.  In this life he is just a stand-up guy, which suits me (and him) just fine.

Every interaction with Terry keeps me on my toes.  There is always a zinger lurking beneath the subtext of our conversations waiting to catch me by surprise.  And it always does.  So when he responded to my blog request for “words, just words”, I knew some well-considered grenades would be forthcoming.  I covered my head and hunkered down.

Without much in the way of gratuitous fanfare, the words came.  It turns out Terry knows a lot of words, and was only too glad to share.   My sad, pristine screen welcomed the nudge, anxious to host the tale of the day.   I use these word suggestions like flint; some of them spark an inspiration and others do not.  Terry's offer of “loquacious” made me think of the way I get when I am nervous, perhaps evoked by Terry’s own memory of the many hours we sat on his floor during my freshman year, chatting willy-nilly until all hours.  Talking is my personal version of flop sweat.  I used to prevent rambling in job interviews through a mental game.  I would listen to the interviewer’s question, count to three before answering, and then allow myself a maximum of three sentences in which to answer the question directly.  After that, I would either lob a question back at the interviewer, or simply stop talking.

My favorite of Terry’s word gifts is “jejune,” which I hope will not be used to describe this blog.  The only time I have ever heard this particular word used in speech was in the Woody Allen classic, Love and Death.  In one hysterical scene, Allen admonishes Diane Keaton for quoting Attila The Hun at him, a response she labels, “jejune.”  His rejoinder is one of the greatest lines in all of film:  “Jejune?  You have the temerity to say that I am talking to you out of jejunosity?  I am one of the most ‘june’ people in all of the Russias!”  I refuse to touch it, bowing to Woody Allen's genius and allowing him the last word.

On the other hand, Terry's suggestion of “inept” (again, hoping I was not the inspiration for these words) made me think of economics.  Terry was an economics major.  But with apologies for mentioning it, Terry is not the most famous of his family’s economists—his brother having captured one of those big Swedish prizes that remind the rest of us how inept we truly are.  I studied economics in graduate school.  Although I mastered a pedestrian understanding of microeconomic concepts, I never felt particularly “ept” in class.  

Back when game theory was still relatively new, Terry threw one of his brother’s brain teasers at me—a now common instructional dilemma based on Let’s Make a Deal.  It went something like this:  You are presented with curtain A, B and C.  Behind one curtain is a fabulous prize; behind the other two are duds.  With no particular information, you select curtain B.  Monte Hall then opens curtain A to reveal 10 sacks of potatoes.  Unless you are very weird, this is a dud.  He then gives you the option to stay with your original choice of curtain B, or to switch your choice to curtain C.  What do you do?

Although not immediately intuitive to mere mortals, the answer is that you always switch your choice to curtain C.  Despite my unenlightened indignation, Terry argued that this was the case, citing arcane economic theories that made my head hurt.  A few years later I had the opportunity to sit with Terry’s learned brother during the intermission of an amazing chamber music concert.  Patiently and generously, he reviewed the Monte Hall dilemma with me until I understood his rationale.  In the first case, your chance of choosing correctly is 1 in 3; once curtain 1 is opened, changing your pick improves your chance of being right to 1 in 2.  (I would argue, through a statistician’s lens, that choosing to stay with curtain B is still making a discrete 1 in 2 choice, but I have been assured that I am wrong.)

I would love to repay Terry for his gracious offering of inspirational words by sending him some words that cater to his interests.   I know “Fettucini Alfredo,” “Pizza,” and “Cheeseburger” to be among his favorites, all the more healthful when served up in print rather than on his plate.  He has never found vegetables to be particularly succulent despite being presented with evidence of their nutritional value. Thanks to his remarkable wife, he now accepts broccoli and salad the way I accept curtain B.    We’ll call it even.