Jejune, Shrapnel and Mustelids

I've always been a lover of words. When I was a kid I used to leaf through dictionary's for fun and when I learned a new word for the first time that meant everyone else did too. Most kids get called mean names based on what the bully's have decided is your greatest weakness and I was not spared mean name callers. I was Encyclopedia Brown....They derisively called me Encyclopedia Brown. Why? Racism mainly. My beautiful Indigenous genes meant I was perma-tanned making me the darkest kid in school who also liked read the dictionary. Unforch for them, I considered it a compliment. I clapped back by calling them Jejune and because they had no idea what jejune meant momentary confusion was created, like an Octopus's ink cloud, provided distraction for escape. I insisted that my mother make me an Encyclopedia Brown costume for Halloween that year. Nobody got it...including my mother.

The principal of the school who was born in Brobdingnag and my favorite teacher was also a locutionary mentor and his teachings codified the words as weapon theory for me.

I needed words and I yielded words to be like weapons I had to-- because the one fist fight that I was part of was most definitely going to be the last and I needed some other kind of skill set that didn't require knowing how to throw a punch. Prior to the fight there was so much build up in the classroom with the other kid who apparently got annoyed with me because I had dared to use the word Shrapnel in a sentence...blah blah blah he called me Encyclopedia Brown and I called him Shrapnel Face. I say he apparently got annoyed cause like most kids he didn't know the meaning of shrapnel was or how I was likening it to his mouth full of industrial strength tooth brackets forged in fires of Mount Doom and he called braces. Eventually someone must have enlightened him because the next thing I know he's in my face accusing me of being dead and that he's was going to be the cause of it

These words are unmistakable and every kid knows drill. Its MMA--Moppet edition. And there's no escape either, well actually, I could have just walked home but didn't because the rules. All the other kids were already situated near what we called The Green Thing( the electrical generator)--The Site of all Fights. It was rare for school yard fights to garner attention from almost the entire student body but this one did for 2 reasons both of which were my fault. I never fought before not even once...I had never been in a fight and they all knew it. There was this ghoulish desire to see what would happen.

And secondly on the way out I had poured gasoline on the fire and the kid was in state of white hot rage. He had been trying to intimidate me with trash talk but it had the opposite effect because this kid had a really high voice for a boy and his braces weren't doing him an favours either. So I was rightly confused as to why he kept calling me a Mustelid. Its was mostly the typical school yards slurs and insults but then he said it for the first time and in the context of hurling a insult -- inexplicably mustelid....mustelid.

Why was he using, however incorrectly, taxonomic classifications to insult me by implying that I was a member of the weasel family? it was baffling. When I asked him why he was calling me a mustelid he would say "I'm not calling you a mustard lid I'm calling you a mustelid" to which I replied "Well do I get to choose? because I'd like to try wolverine or possibly pine marten." I never did find out what he was actually trying to say ( mustard lid can be ruled out) but I do know that you shouldn't continue the taxonomical insult device but decide to switch it up with Rodentia. Because calling a bucked-toothed bully a Capybara, the largest rat in the world, is rage inducing...cause he knew that word.

The fight if you can call it that was over in less than a second. Rage with the machine mouth probably had a circuit break or something because he was the whitest kid in the school and he was currently presenting as Red. So he just sorta flung himself at me with arms flailing about. There was a lot of yelling and threatening but I don't think he actually hit me. I cried anyway which I thought was my best way out...this made everyone uncomfortable as I used that very moment to insist i was in fact a girl now and I would be living out my elementary school days in the company of the girl clique jumping elastic spaghettis rope, learning how to French braid and causing eating disorders to manifest in the Catholic school girls down the street.

Mustelid...what could have he been saying?