One of my favourite things to do is play around with genres and words when they do not fit the setting. Way back when I was a camp director guy, one word I liked to use outside the more traditional context was ‘voluptuous’. I would say something like “what a voluptuous day!” and I remember my friend Kim saying “I’m pretty sure you do not know what that means.” We can look at the definitions.
1 full of, characterized by, or ministering to indulgence in luxury, pleasure, and sensuous enjoyment:
a voluptuous life.
2 derived from gratification of the senses:
voluptuous pleasure.
3 directed toward or concerned with sensuous enjoyment or sensual pleasure:
voluptuous desires.
4 sensuously pleasing or delightful:
voluptuous beauty.
I think with the passage of time what I said was indeed weird, but not technically wrong. So I stand by it. Do not google image search this word.
Another fun thing I got to do a few years ago, my friends wife asked his friends to write encouragement notes. I had moved away, and so I had to demand that my offering be read aloud for me at the party. My request was granted.
With that I set to work on something that honestly only took me about 10 minutes, but apparently was so well written and excellently performed by my pal Ben, we had the birthday boy in tears laughing. Here’s an ever so slightly re-edited version of the (b)romance letter I wrote Jesse, read by Ben.
Dear Jesse,
It has been multiple fortnights since I felt your caress. The memory of your scent still lingers in my mind. Wondering if you are out there thinking of me, the way I think of you. To think that you might be out there missing me as I miss you breaks my heart. Oh, how I would do anything to see you again. Were we closer I would steal away as much of your time as I could. The spring around me harkens me back to a day not so long ago when you and I went for frozen yogurt together, with 60 of our closest classmates. If you were a frozen yogurt flavor, I think you would be passion fruit mixed with some Reese pieces mixed in for some reason. It was sweet, and a little salty in a weird way.
Oh, how I recall on that day when we all lined up for a picture, I’ll never forget when you jumped on my back for that sweet picture. Damn, you were heavy. Why did it take so long for that man to take our picture? And why did our closet 60 classmates have to be there? That was our moment. But I will not let their memory sully it. In that moment, we were like a two headed monster that weighed approximately 450 lbs and stood 7 feet high. It was blissful.
But today is about you. You and your strong masculine leadership muscles have made another trip around the sun, and so we celebrate that instead of mourning my loss of your face being in my life on a day to day basis. How I wish we could go back to that autumn, quading around the bushes with not a care in the world. Just laughing about anything and everything, especially when I flew over the front of my quad, and instead of breaking my neck, I hustled out of the way of the quad preparing to fall on me as fast as I could. As the quad straddled back instead of falling on me, I rose up, hoping that just maybe you had not seen it happen. Alas, you had, because instead of warning me about the giant f-ing bump, you turned around to see how I handled it. Poorly, as it turned out.
Now with all that being said, I just want you to know, that I wish you the happiest of birthdays, and while I am sullen that I am not there, I hope that it will be nothing but sheer joy for you, my darling Jesse. I will see you in my dreams.
Happy 26th Birthday.
Clinton L. Pigeau
I think what makes it even better was my letter was not the only letter read aloud as our buddy Kyle also was unable to attend. Kyle took the assignment to heart and wrote a letter about how great Jesse is/was/could be some day, and so after a tear inducing laugh filled letter, Mason stepped up to read a solemn and devoted letter of friendship. The image in my mind of the the genre switch only makes it even funnier for me to think about.
Hopefully there was a laugh in these stories somewhere for you!
Clinton Laurence Pigeau
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