Off

I remember, when I was four, thinking to myself: "I must invent a fictional childhood anecdote to include in my blog in 2010. Whatever a blog may be."

And so I did.

***

I'm feeling a bit off-kilter today. I'm nowhere near kilter, in fact. I don't even know what it means.

Is it a person who makes kilts? Like a Scottish blacksmith? Well, I'm off him anyway. Or her. I don't think kilter is gender specific.

Kiltress is a bit old-fashioned nowadays. There's no need to engender a noun like that. So kilter will do for all.

(Just too clear up any confusion: I'm also off-kiltress)

The feminine equivalent of matter is mattress.

Which just goes to show the endemic misogyny of the English language. The male is equated with matter: import, reality, the substance of life itself. The female is equated with something soft to lie on.

But on the other hand butter is soft and yielding, whereas buttress is strong and fundamental. Language is confusing.

Distress is bad, dister isn't even a word.

Where was I?

In 1997? Dublin.

No, now.

You're here. Well, not here. There.

Where? Here?

Whatever.

Oh yes: off-kilter.

I'm off-kilter.

I'm also out of whack.

I'm completely out of whack. There's no whack left. The cupboards are bare.

The whack cupboards.

I think it's because whack can be used to melt ice, as an alternative to salt.

You may have seen the whack-trucks sprinkling it hither and thither.

And whither.

So I'm off-kilter and out of whack.

And I'm askew.

Like my father and his father before him. I come from a long line of skews.

We changed the course of history.

There aren't as many of us around nowadays. We've been hounded out.

"No skews is good skews," they say, incorrectly.

I'm off-kilter, out of whack and askew.

I'm also unhinged, but then so are most non-doors.