I once knew a man named Wendell Wordsworth—and yes, that was his real name, which should tell you everything you need to know about his parents’ sense of humor and his inevitable destiny. Wendell had devoted his life to what he called “linguistic innovation,” though the rest of us called it “making normal conversation impossible.”
While other children his age were learning to ride bicycles, Wendell was memorizing the etymology of the word “bicycle.” By thirty-five, he had achieved the dubious distinction of being the only person in Akron, Ohio, to footnote his own speech in real time.
“The early worm catches the bird’s attention,*” he would announce each morning to his bathroom mirror, as if his reflection might finally appreciate the genius of his wordplay. His apartment looked like what would happen if the Oxford English Dictionary exploded and decided to redecorate. Every surface was covered with index cards bearing phrases like “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket case” and “A watched pot never boils over with enthusiasm.”
Wendell worked at Peterson & Associates Insurance, a job that provided him with what he generously termed “a captive audience for beta testing.” His coworkers had developed the thousand-yard stare typically reserved for war veterans and people trapped in elevators with motivational speakers.
“Janet!” he would chirp each morning to the receptionist, a woman whose soul had been slowly crushed by six months of experimental vocabulary. “Hope you don’t have too many fish in your kettles** today!”
Janet would look up with the expression of someone contemplating career changes, possibly involving relocating to a remote cabin where human speech was limited to essential grunts.
“It’s Tuesday, Wendell,” she would reply, in the tone people use when explaining to their grandmother that email doesn’t require postage.
“Exactly! Tuesday’s when the rubber meets the metaphor!***”
Mr. Peterson, Wendell’s supervisor, had initially been charmed by what he called “fresh thinking.” This lasted approximately six weeks, or until the morning Wendell left a company-wide memo titled “Proposed Improvements to the English Language: A Modest Proposal for Workplace Efficiency.” The memo was fourteen pages long and included a detailed explanation of why “thinking outside the sphere****” was geometrically superior to thinking outside the box.
The end came during a quarterly meeting when Wendell stood up—he always stood up, as if his phrases required the full authority of his five-foot-six frame—and declared, “I think we’re all barking up the wrong telephone pole***** here!”
The silence that followed was the kind typically reserved for moments when someone accidentally announces their hemorrhoid problems to the entire office.
“Wendell,” Peterson said, with the patience of a man explaining fire safety to an arsonist, “what does that mean?”
“Well, sir, telephone poles are taller than trees, so metaphorically speaking—”
“Wendell.”
“Yes?”
“Please. Just… talk like a person.”
That night, Wendell called his sister Linda, the only family member who still answered his calls without immediately checking the time and claiming she had somewhere urgent to be.
“Linda,” he said, “I think I’m swimming upstream in a desert of understanding******.”
There was a pause. Linda was a kindergarten teacher, which meant she had professional experience dealing with people who spoke in ways that defied logic.
“Wendell, honey,” she said finally, “you know how kids sometimes make up words and then get frustrated when adults don’t understand them?”
“Are you comparing me to a five-year-old?”
“I’m comparing you to my five-year-olds, who at least have the excuse of not knowing better.”
This was what passed for tough love in the Wordsworth family.
“Look,” Linda continued, “good catchphrases happen naturally. They come from real situations. You can’t just manufacture them like… like linguistic sausages.”
Wendell hung up, oddly inspired. He grabbed a fresh notebook and wrote: “Natural Phrase Development Project – Day 1.” Then he crossed it out and wrote: “Stop Being Weird – Day 1.” Then he crossed that out too and went to bed.
Six months later, at the company picnic, something miraculous happened. Janet mentioned it was a beautiful day, and Wendell—brace yourself—simply agreed. No footnotes. No metaphors involving weather patterns and emotional topography. Just plain, unadorned agreement.
His coworkers stared at him as if he’d performed a magic trick, which, in a way, he had. The magic of normal human conversation.
“You know,” Peterson whispered to Janet as they watched Wendell walk away without explaining his locomotion in terms of destiny or ambulation, “I almost miss the old Wendell.”
“Really?”
“Well, it was never boring.”
And maybe that’s the thing about people like Wendell. They make us appreciate the simple pleasure of being understood on the first try. Though I heard he still keeps a notebook, just in case he finds himself in a genuine “too many fish in the kettles” situation. Some habits, apparently, die harder than others.
*Wendell’s improvement on “the early bird catches the worm,” based on his theory that modern career success requires attention rather than consumption.
**Wendell’s signature phrase for “being overwhelmed,” which he hoped would replace “too many irons in the fire” due to what he called “kitchen appliance modernization.”
***His attempt to combine “where the rubber meets the road” with the concept of metaphor itself, creating what he believed was “meta-metaphorical efficiency.”
****An upgrade from “thinking outside the box” that Wendell insisted was “geometrically more sophisticated.”
*****Wendell’s technological update to “barking up the wrong tree,” reflecting what he called “contemporary communication infrastructure.”
******A phrase combining “swimming upstream” with “desert” to indicate, in Wendell’s words, “working hard in an environment completely antithetical to your efforts.”
