Monday, June 09, 2008

Palindrome

In my college years, I worked part time at Sears in Orange, CT in the paint department. One day, while filling in at the candy counter, Sally and Emma, two highly educated coworkers, called me a "palindrome". I didn't know what a palindrome was but figured I'd been insulted. I sought out several of my fellow employees and asked what the word meant, but to further antagonize me, Sally and Emma had coached everyone and instructed them not to tell me.The only answer I got was "Bob, you're definitely a palindrome, but we can't say why." I was livid. When I got home I ran to the dictionary and looked it up:

pal·in·drome n.
1. A word, phrase, verse, or sentence that reads the same backward or forward. For example: A man, a plan, a canal, Panama! 2. Bob!

I was reminded of this story today, because my friend Jamie sent me this belated "Bob Day" video:




4 comments:

Jeff said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

I read a story called "Hannah is a Palindrome" when I was in third grade. It had the same idea- a class full of kids taunted the reader of the week, Hannah, by calling her a palindrome, until she looked up the word in the dictionary, and wrote "Otto is a palindrome", which was the name of one of her classmates, on the board. It was a cute story.

(Sorry about the deleted comment, I'm Jeff's girlfriend and for some reason, his blogger account was logged in on my computer!)

Steve said...

"Weird Al" is a genius!

Anonymous said...

One of my favorite music videos ever made.

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