Out of Sorts

While it is true that I'm feeling antsy and I don't know why, that's not what this post is about.  It's about the laugh I got when I analyzed my emotional state and said that phrase to myself on the drive home from the post office.  I laughed as I wondered where my sorts had gone. I thought I had plenty of them in stock....

Or, I wondered, was I in sorts over the weekend with my girlfriend and am I now out of sorts because she is gone?  It's a mystery, that's for sure.

This obsession with absurdity in the language began in earnest when Big Cuter was an infant. His pediatrician had just opened his practice, leaving hospital medicine behind for the pleasures of becoming more involved with the families of the children he treated.  Our appointments lasted for an hour, back then.  He always had a story about one of his own four boys, he was never rushed, he always began by asking how the parents were doing, and he had a sense of humor.  

Big Cuter's first high fever sent me rushing to the office, droopy baby in my arms.  He lay on the examining table, warm to the touch and uninterested in the world around him.  This was not my boy; "He's so listless," I lamented.

Pausing in his exam, the doctor looked over at me and nodded sagely.  "Yes, indeed.  There is an absence of list."  He went back to the patient, and I was left to wonder if one can be listful.  It was better than worrying about my baby.

Merle Reagle, crossword creator extraordinaire,  calls phrases that can't be literally deconstructed Bang Bang Words.  Take the traitorous  turn coat.  It's the coat that is turning, isn't it?  Coat turn would be more correct.  

This, denizens, is what happens to the human brain when the temperatures are over one hundred degrees day after day after week after week.  When the clouds form and then disappear, dropping nary a trickle on the overheated land, it's all I can do not to cry.  My mind cries out for relief.  It is melting.
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I told you my brain was melted... I never pushed "publish"..... forgive me for posting late today ??