DANCE, CHIFFAROBE, DANCE!

I like the word “chiffarobe.” I learned it in tenth grade, studying that great literary work To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee. I like how the word sounds and how my mouth feels when I say it. Try it. Say “chiffarobe.”

You don’t hear that word much anymore, and I just discovered that it isn’t in my spell check, either. “Chiffarobe” comes to mind occasionally, probably because we have a chiffarobe of sorts. My husband’s chest of drawers (or “chester drawers” as you often see in the classified ads) has doors on the front, so I think of it as a chiffarobe. Our big cat, Dandy, likes to make his way up on top of the chiffarobe from the table by the bed, then leap across to the bed. He does it to get attention; he knows full well he isn’t allowed up there. A few minutes ago I got Dandy down from the bedside table, before he got to the chiffarobe, so now “chiffarobe” is going to be dancing around in my head all day long.

I was thinking that I don’t believe my kids read To Kill A Mockingbird in our homeschool. If they did, I don’t think we discussed it, or maybe we did but I have forgotten. I was also thinking, though, that if my kids were here and we were homeschooling today, I’d have them choose a book, read a chapter and find an interesting new word that we could discuss then use as often as possible all day long, maybe all week long. That would be fun, it would be educational, and when they are old like me perhaps their words would come back to them and dance around in their heads all day.

I need to rent the movie To Kill A Mockingbird with Gregory Peck. Great movie. I always think of the book and movie when I think of John Grisham’s A Time to Kill, another great book (John Grisham’s best, I think), because they both take place in the south and the situations are so similar. Yes, I need to read both those books again. Maybe I’ll find another vocabulary word that can be a brain-dance partner for “chiffarobe.”