NEW YORK STATE OF WORDS

Last week I enjoyed a frigid spring break with my daughter and her high school choir in New York City. We spent over 36 hours on the bus and got an average of five hours of sleep each night. We returned on Monday and I'm still catching up.

As one might expect, New York City is full of words. Words on billboards, words on street signs, words on homemade signs tacked to street light poles. Words in multiple languages. Words telling you to go this way; words telling you to go that way. Words on a Vistaprint car magnet proclaiming availability for "baby proofing and seatbelt installation services," a brilliant business idea in New York City where there are people who rarely drive, mostly carrying their babies in snuggies on their chests and who probably don't know how to install their carseats properly and who probably do not switch them to and fro as much as we lesser-city people do. Also a brilliant idea in a city where people are constantly running, always late - and I can understand why for as long as it takes to maneuver around people to get from point A to point B. A brilliant business for New York City but not so much where I come from because the small percentage of people who would pay for such services would not equate to enough to earn an adequate living.

But, I digress. I saw so many words in New York City; more than anywhere else, like the number of words in a city is directly proportional to the number of people. The point? The world does not run without words. And the more of us there are in any given area, the more we need them so we can avoid utter chaos. There were times I could have used even more words to keep up with our tour guide who claimed to have lived in the city nearly all her life but who still managed to make a couple of wrong turns and not realize two major events were being held the exact same times we were going to be in those particular areas.

We need an exorbitant number of words to tell us which way to go or we would all be running into each other, getting nowhere. Without words to ground you to your location when you finally swim out of the sea of drunk St. Patrick's Day Parade goers going the opposite direction from you, you would not be able to get back on track on the way to your destination. And the more diverse we are, the clearer the words need to be in the language we speak or they are rendered useless. I was reminded in New York City, again, how much not only I need words because they are the tools in my chosen profession, but how much everyone needs words in order to function and in order to maintain, well ... order. Sure, sometimes pictures can do the trick but to be positively clear, they also need words.

Happy word searching, world!
The Wordsy Woman