Boost Your Brain Power!
Eve Legato
"Hey." I looked up from my computer and my yogurt at the barefoot teenager shuffling into the room.
"Hey," I replied.
Talk radio blared from the counter as she opened the fridge and stared at its contents for a while. She'd been taller than me for a few years, but this year she had gone through a growth spurt, and now she was practically a giant. I watched her grab an apple, tossing it a few times as she carried it to the table. Who was this sporty, confident person who had once been my baby sister?
"So what are we doing today?" she asked.
I took a deep breath and let it out. "I don't know," I said. I really didn't. What did 14-year-olds even do?
Allie and I had been close once, when she was tiny, as in under seven years old. I was in high school at the time, and she would skip into my room, curls bouncing, and sing me the song she learned in kindergarten that day. I would gladly turn away from my chem homework to read to her before bedtime, a chapter of James and the Giant Peach or Anne of Green Gables, books I'd loved when I was a kid. Over the weeks before I went to college, she cried multiple times at the mere thought of me leaving.
I did go to college, though, and we both adjusted. I made new friends and got invested in my new classes and relationships. When I came home to visit, I focused on catching up with old high school friends. After college, I moved to New York for a job and found love. But each time I returned home, there was more of a distance between Allie and me. Like me, she'd found new friends and activities. She was growing up, and I was too far away to be a part of that experience.
When my partner decided to go back to school, we packed up our New York apartment and prepared for the move to the Midwest town where the college was located. But our move-in date wasn't until late August, and our lease was up July 15th. We decided to spend the month between homes with our respective families. I'd told Allie that it would be a time for us to bond. But now that I was home, I had no idea how we were going to fill the month. I didn't even know her enough to know how she spent her time.
The talk radio program droned on, filling our awkward silence. The novel they were discussing suffered from many growing pains common to the new author. The main character had no agency, and the world in which he lived lacked verisimilitude.
"I always wondered what verisimilitude means," I mused, because at least it was something to say. "I mean, I've heard the word before, but I still have no idea."
"Look it up," said Allie, sounding suspiciously like our mother.
I typed "verisimilitude definition" into Google. "Having the appearance or semblance of truth," I read. Then I looked up at Allie. "Does that make sense?"
"A little," she said. "See if you can find it in a sentence."
I did a little digging, and then read proudly, "In an attempt to create verisimilitude, his dialogue is full of street slang."
I looked at Allie. She grinned at me.
"You know what we should do?" I asked. "We should do this every day. It can be our mission while I'm home to learn a new word each day."
It only sounded incredibly nerdy after I said it out loud. But this was the girl I read Anne of Green Gables to as a kid. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.
"Okay," she said. "But then we have to try and use the words in our normal conversation. Like, just slip them in there."
"We can give each other points for every time we use a word right!" I said.
Thus, The Word of the Day was born.
For the next few mornings, I would bring my laptop to breakfast, and we would spend the first hour of our day eating and looking for words. We laughed a lot, trying to find the funniest-sounding words, coming across the strangest sample sentences, and hearing the best voices when we clicked on pronunciation buttons over and over again. Our favorite word was "agroof," which apparently was an adjective for falling flat on your face. The proper usage? I fell agroof.
Throughout our days, we tried to slip words like "verisimilitude" and "blandishment" into our everyday speech. And in those forced, silly sentences, we learned a lot more about each other. Allie, I learned, was on the track team at school, and her commitment to running every day, even in the summer when her coach wasn't checking up on her, was impressive. She was as disciplined as she was smart.
One day, when I was meeting friends for dinner, she sent me a text:
"My new contacts added verisimilitude to my run—everything was sharper than usual, so I knew I was indeed in reality."
I was chuckling as I got a second text:
"I expect that you fell agroof in astonishment upon reading my previous text."
You never know what is going to bring people together. Sometimes, it's the littlest things—a conversation starter, a shared challenge, a silly word—that are the most bonding.
When I finally moved, I found myself missing our morning routine. At least, though, I knew Allie and I had a point of entry to start our conversation when I called her: What's the word of the day?
(966 words)