I know of dozens of examples, from friends and blogs, of words people learned by reading them without ever hearing them pronounced. (In fact, Steve at languagehat recently posted on pace, which seems to be in that category for lots of people, including me.) Those are fun, but there aren’t usually any surprises in those stories; almost nobody, f’rinstance, gets a proper mental pronunciation of “respite” or “reprise” right off the bat.

The stories that I find more interesting are the ones about where people learned things in the first place. I’ve realized, over the course of nine years now of telling Eric, “Oh, this movie is where I learned who that person is” and “The first time I ever heard that word was in this song,” that pop culture planted a lot of flags in my brain. I’ve got huge tracts of (mental) land that were first plowed by really just the unlikeliest developers. A sampling:

Lots of my pretty meager tropical geography comes courtesy of the Beach Boys—I don’t think I was familiar with name of a single place mentioned in “Kokomo” before the song hit the radio. I take that back: I knew of Jamaica.

Madeleine L’Engle (RIP) taught me about tesseracts and mitochondria (although I was disappointed to learn that real mitochondria are not in fact little mouse-things that grow into bigger little tree-things).

I learned quite a lot from the Bangles: the word “manic,” the facts that the Soviet government was based in a building called the Kremlin and that Japanese money is called yen, and the trope that policemen eat lots of doughnuts while they’re on duty.

And of course, it’s thanks to The Golden Girls that I know what a confidant is.

This aborted opening line was found discarded at the limerick factory. Our specialists at the Light Verse Rescue Society (motto: “Double Your Dactyls Before They’re All History”) suspect that it was the Line-One Man’s (please forgive the technical terminology) vacation destination—HawaiÊ»i—that led some overtaxed limerick factorer to abandon an otherwise perfectly serviceable first line. The rescue team also found a list of attributes that were presumably to have been included in what would have been a remarkable limerick indeed.

• The entire vacation (minus a six-and-a-half-hour layover in Honolulu International Airport) was spent on the Big Island, primarily in Kailua and Waikoloa Beach.
• Daytrips included a jaunt through Kohala and Hāmākua down to Hilo, a hiking excursion in KÄ«lauea Iki in Volcanoes National Park, and kayaking and snorkeling in Kealakekua Bay.
• The culmination of the trip was Line-One Man’s sister’s wedding, which Line-One Man himself performed. (To give this limerick some real literary weight, try to work in the fact that he included T.S. Eliot’s “A Dedication to My Wife” as the reading in the ceremony.)
• The ceremony was held on Hapuna Beach, with flower petals scattered down the aisle to protect the wedding party’s feet from hot sand.
• The bride and groom both had tears in their eyes; Line-One Man himself almost cried when he heard his sister’s voice break while she recited the ring part of the ceremony.
• The whole week was amazing, and Line-One Man and his partner both returned home with no sunburn at all—but quite a collection of bug bites.

We are offering prizes (and by “prizes” we mean “esteem with no monetary value but great emotional worth”) to readers who complete the limerick according to factory specifications.

MEMO #070602E

FROM: THE CITY OFFICE FOR SAFER MUSICOVEHICULAR OPERATION

TO: ALL OTHER DEPENDENT MSB DEPARTMENTS

Reports have recently come to the attention of the COSMO Director that an individual can gravely strain his throat if he is driving on the freeway with no passengers and listening to Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer.”

Particularly after the key change.

COSMO researchers are currently investigating methods of avoiding serious injury. Until a successful strategy is determined, please forward all consumer questions and complaints to the Customer Service Department, which has recently been merged with the Song and Dance Division (see Notice #440).

Thank you for your cooperation.