March 20: Little Miss Muffet's tuffet
You know, I guess I went through more than four decades on planet Earth without knowing what a tuffet is.
I heard the nursery rhyme about Little Miss Muffet and I was so stricken with her intense arachnophobia that I never stopped to ask for a proper definition of tuffet. Wikipedia provides me with an answer. To wit:
"A tuffet, pouffe or hassock is a piece of furniture used as a footstool or low seat. It is distinguished from a stool by being completely covered in cloth so that no legs are visible. It is essentially a large hard cushion that may have an internal wooden frame to give it more rigidity. Wooden feet may be added to the base to give it stability, at which point it becomes a stool or a footstool. If the piece is larger, with storage space inside it, then it is generally known as an ottoman."
This last bit is crucial. Had the tuffet had a hollowed out storage area inside, it would cease to be a tuffet. Then the nursery rhyme would have to go: "Little Miss Monohan sat on an ottoman..."
Just doesn't work...
-
Now memory returns.
As a kid, I assumed tuffet was a synonym for derriere. I did not ask for clarification because I feared being reprimanded as a smartass.
But now I see that she was sitting on a stool.
With her bum.
-
Bum is a funny word. I don't know why. It just is.
I used to know this girl in Toronto and I made up a joke for her. It went like this:
Q. What's the difference between the sky and your bum?
A. You can't fly airplanes across your bum.
Her reply was this: "Hmm. Not funny."
-
She's probably right. It isn't funny.
-
I don't know what the big deal is about spiders.
I know lost of people who are scared to death of them. A friend in Utah recently said she found a spider in her kitchen and now she has to move. She is kidding of course - using hyperbole to inform her facebook friends that she is a confirmed arachnophobe. As for me, I have made peace with the knowledge that I have swallowed several spiders in my sleep.
And c'mon... after EB White, how can anyone hate spiders?
-
This one time in Alberta, I was set up on a blind date with a girl who was still in high school. This was distressing to me because I was 29.
I took the girl to a movie (the Banger Sisters starring Goldie Hawn and Susan Sarandon) and then we went for coffee and that is where she told me she was in Grade 12. This did not make me happy. The person who had set us up told me that she worked in a funeral home. The Grade 12 student informed me that was incorrect, that she was simply doing her co-op there.
Then I had to drive her to the Keg, where she worked as a hostess.
I should have gone right home but I couldn't. That's because while we were enjoying coffee - and before she told me she was in high school - we talked about literature. I told her I considered Charlotte's Web to be the best piece of children's literature ever written. She confessed that she'd never read it. I thought that was sad.
So instead of going home, I drove to the nearest Chapters and bought a copy of Charlotte's Web and then I wrote something nice in it and then I went to the Keg and I gave it to her and I have not seen her since.
I just googled her though and discovered that she is a professional funeral director today and this makes me happy. Her dream has come true.
-
I could never date Little Miss Muffet. She seems like a bit of a wuss.
-
The person who gave me this note title is not a wuss. Neither is her sister, who is like a world-champion kickboxer.
The person who gave me this note title is a Toronto Maple Leafs fan. This made me sad because we went to a hockey game once and I thought she was going to cheer for the Flames but she cheered for the Leafs instead.
The person who gave me this note title once downed a whole bunch of beers and then kicked my ass at pool. She has an older brother who was very quiet around me and I regret that I didn't talk to him more to see what he thinks about life.
She doesn't live here anymore. Now she is in England. Shakespeare is also from England. So is James Bond. And my family. England is probably the best place in the world. I own a shirt with a Union Jack on it. When I wear it, I am reminded of the dress Geri Halliwell wore when she was Ginger Spice and a member of the Spice Girls.
-
There is a girl in my town who looks a lot like Geri Halliwell. Once her picture was on the front page of the newspaper. She used to make belts out of candy bar labels (the girl in my town, I mean. Not Geri Halliwell.)
-
The person who gave me this note title does not own a tuffet. She owns a couch though. I slept on it one night and her dog actually slept with me for about twenty minutes before deciding he wanted to sleep somewhere else.
-
I actually had a tarantula crawl on my tummy once.
I did not want this to happen. But I was at Leelee's house and she owns a whole bunch of tarantulas and she insisted that I should not be a wuss and then she demonstrated how much of a non-wuss she was by letting a tarantula sit on her face.
So I let it sit on my tummy. I expected it to bore into my skin and lay eggs and that a million itty bitty tarantulas would devour me and make my brain crazy so that I became an anti-vaccination person and a vegetarian and a fan of professional basketball.
But these things did not happen. Here is what happened when the tarantula was placed on my belly:
It stood there.
That's actually all tarantulas do for like 23-and-a-half hours a day. They just stand there and do nothing and think tarantula thoughts like "gee I'd like to eat a cricket" or "I wish I could mate with a female so that she can kill me right after we're done."
So the spider in the Little Miss Muffet poem was probably not a tarantula. It was probably a daddy long legs, which is the freakiest looking spider in the world.
I had a friend in Grade 2 who liked to pull the legs of daddy long legs and then burn their dismembered torsos with sunlight through a magnifying glass.
That kid failed Grade 2. I was happy. I thought he was mean.
There was a story going around the school about this other mean kid who once got his friends to hold down another kid and they burned his eyeballs out with sunlight through a magnifying glass.
That was obviously an urban legend.
It never happened.
Neither did the events recounted in Charlotte's Web.
Whether Little Miss Muffet is based on a true story, only God knows.
What I do know is that most of us would rather eat spiders than be forced to eat curds and whey.
I heard the nursery rhyme about Little Miss Muffet and I was so stricken with her intense arachnophobia that I never stopped to ask for a proper definition of tuffet. Wikipedia provides me with an answer. To wit:
"A tuffet, pouffe or hassock is a piece of furniture used as a footstool or low seat. It is distinguished from a stool by being completely covered in cloth so that no legs are visible. It is essentially a large hard cushion that may have an internal wooden frame to give it more rigidity. Wooden feet may be added to the base to give it stability, at which point it becomes a stool or a footstool. If the piece is larger, with storage space inside it, then it is generally known as an ottoman."
This last bit is crucial. Had the tuffet had a hollowed out storage area inside, it would cease to be a tuffet. Then the nursery rhyme would have to go: "Little Miss Monohan sat on an ottoman..."
Just doesn't work...
-
Now memory returns.
As a kid, I assumed tuffet was a synonym for derriere. I did not ask for clarification because I feared being reprimanded as a smartass.
But now I see that she was sitting on a stool.
With her bum.
-
Bum is a funny word. I don't know why. It just is.
I used to know this girl in Toronto and I made up a joke for her. It went like this:
Q. What's the difference between the sky and your bum?
A. You can't fly airplanes across your bum.
Her reply was this: "Hmm. Not funny."
-
She's probably right. It isn't funny.
-
I don't know what the big deal is about spiders.
I know lost of people who are scared to death of them. A friend in Utah recently said she found a spider in her kitchen and now she has to move. She is kidding of course - using hyperbole to inform her facebook friends that she is a confirmed arachnophobe. As for me, I have made peace with the knowledge that I have swallowed several spiders in my sleep.
And c'mon... after EB White, how can anyone hate spiders?
-
This one time in Alberta, I was set up on a blind date with a girl who was still in high school. This was distressing to me because I was 29.
I took the girl to a movie (the Banger Sisters starring Goldie Hawn and Susan Sarandon) and then we went for coffee and that is where she told me she was in Grade 12. This did not make me happy. The person who had set us up told me that she worked in a funeral home. The Grade 12 student informed me that was incorrect, that she was simply doing her co-op there.
Then I had to drive her to the Keg, where she worked as a hostess.
I should have gone right home but I couldn't. That's because while we were enjoying coffee - and before she told me she was in high school - we talked about literature. I told her I considered Charlotte's Web to be the best piece of children's literature ever written. She confessed that she'd never read it. I thought that was sad.
So instead of going home, I drove to the nearest Chapters and bought a copy of Charlotte's Web and then I wrote something nice in it and then I went to the Keg and I gave it to her and I have not seen her since.
I just googled her though and discovered that she is a professional funeral director today and this makes me happy. Her dream has come true.
-
I could never date Little Miss Muffet. She seems like a bit of a wuss.
-
The person who gave me this note title is not a wuss. Neither is her sister, who is like a world-champion kickboxer.
The person who gave me this note title is a Toronto Maple Leafs fan. This made me sad because we went to a hockey game once and I thought she was going to cheer for the Flames but she cheered for the Leafs instead.
The person who gave me this note title once downed a whole bunch of beers and then kicked my ass at pool. She has an older brother who was very quiet around me and I regret that I didn't talk to him more to see what he thinks about life.
She doesn't live here anymore. Now she is in England. Shakespeare is also from England. So is James Bond. And my family. England is probably the best place in the world. I own a shirt with a Union Jack on it. When I wear it, I am reminded of the dress Geri Halliwell wore when she was Ginger Spice and a member of the Spice Girls.
-
There is a girl in my town who looks a lot like Geri Halliwell. Once her picture was on the front page of the newspaper. She used to make belts out of candy bar labels (the girl in my town, I mean. Not Geri Halliwell.)
-
The person who gave me this note title does not own a tuffet. She owns a couch though. I slept on it one night and her dog actually slept with me for about twenty minutes before deciding he wanted to sleep somewhere else.
-
I actually had a tarantula crawl on my tummy once.
I did not want this to happen. But I was at Leelee's house and she owns a whole bunch of tarantulas and she insisted that I should not be a wuss and then she demonstrated how much of a non-wuss she was by letting a tarantula sit on her face.
So I let it sit on my tummy. I expected it to bore into my skin and lay eggs and that a million itty bitty tarantulas would devour me and make my brain crazy so that I became an anti-vaccination person and a vegetarian and a fan of professional basketball.
But these things did not happen. Here is what happened when the tarantula was placed on my belly:
It stood there.
That's actually all tarantulas do for like 23-and-a-half hours a day. They just stand there and do nothing and think tarantula thoughts like "gee I'd like to eat a cricket" or "I wish I could mate with a female so that she can kill me right after we're done."
So the spider in the Little Miss Muffet poem was probably not a tarantula. It was probably a daddy long legs, which is the freakiest looking spider in the world.
I had a friend in Grade 2 who liked to pull the legs of daddy long legs and then burn their dismembered torsos with sunlight through a magnifying glass.
That kid failed Grade 2. I was happy. I thought he was mean.
There was a story going around the school about this other mean kid who once got his friends to hold down another kid and they burned his eyeballs out with sunlight through a magnifying glass.
That was obviously an urban legend.
It never happened.
Neither did the events recounted in Charlotte's Web.
Whether Little Miss Muffet is based on a true story, only God knows.
What I do know is that most of us would rather eat spiders than be forced to eat curds and whey.
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