Morning Stories

Some words are so loaded with emotion that they practically hum when you speak them. Barely have the first two letters appeared around the corner, and entire worlds of feelings are already in turmoil. Associations, it seems, have a power of their own — wild, uncontrollable, and often irrational.

It’s practically impossible to avoid them. They’re everywhere. Sometimes coming toward you, sometimes walking away. They move through the days — sometimes loud, sometimes in groups — but always present: people.

The driver drives — and leads — a moving something from a real point A to an imagined point B. Once upon a time, such people were called coachmen, train engineers, or captains.

Some words are born with heavy baggage. “Decision” is one of them. When a word carries that much emotional mortgage, life is hardly sugarcoated. And to make matters worse, even the word itself can’t hold together.

Does intelligence need a PhD? Or is it enough just to be inventive — to find solutions where others see walls?

There are certain words that never sound good to teenage ears. Tradition is one of them.

I don’t see stumbling as an accident — not when it makes your feet lose rhythm or your routine take a detour.

Ah, look at that: a two-seater word. “Believable.” It splits neatly into belief and able. That’s what I’d do—believe, I mean. Or at least, I think I would.

Oh yes, they are. People make mistakes. And people are often mad. Those with unusual behaviour or strange ways of thinking are one kind of the mad ones. The other kind are those with a medical condition — people who could, if they wanted to, pick their diagnosis from a vast catalogue of brain malfunctions.