Lettuce pause for a moment of self-doubt followed by the Serenity Prayer and a daily dose of gratitude for my sister who mailed me a whole passel of jigsaw puzzles. She mailed them in a Crate & Barrel box.
Q. How many 1000-piece jigsaw puzzles did she send?
A. A whole passel.
Q. How do you spell "passel?"
A. "Passel" is spelled like "tassel," and unlike "hassle." "Passel" is a real word. Thank heaven! I didn't just dream it up. It's right there in the big red dictionary.
Just seeing the box of puzzles unleashed an inner endless-loop of the Andrews Sisters singing "I Love You a Bushel and a Peck."
Q. How much do I love you?
A. A bushel and a peck and a hug around the neck.
Q. Is a bushel bigger than a passel?
A. That is comparing apples to oranges with a festive sauce of linguistic idiosyncrasy.
Q. At Christmas dinner the cook opined that peeling 6 lbs. didn't make as many mashed potatoes as it used to.
A. Should that be "as much" or "as many?"
It is still a passel of mashed potatoes. A "passel" is a large quantity although etymologically-derived from "parcel." And "to parcel" means to divvy up and dole out fractions of a whole.
Q. When was Bob Dole on the Republican ticket?
A. Let's skip over this part.
Q. Why do we say "part and parcel?"
A. To mean the whole kit and kaboodle. Also, since part and parcel mean the same thing, the expression is for decorative emphasis with all the bells and whistles.
Q. Does everyone know that The Idiot by Elif Batuman is a really dry funny novel about college, language, linguistics, narrative, meaning, constructed worlds, attending foreign films, Dracula, and conflicted romantic relationships?
A. No, but they need to read it.
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