Morose and Taciturn

I'm getting morose and taciturn.  Look it up if you have to.  And if the phrase sounds familiar, and you don't know my family story, you can check the literary origin.  But trust me when I say, if ever I've said that I'm morose and taciturn, it was always a joke.

The joke started when my eldest--who is okay, by the way, that I mention her in my writing so long as I don't reveal her true identity, so we'll just call her Clark Kent for our purposes--anyway, Clark was a wee tot when her father began to say to her, when accused of being a silly dad, that he was not silly but "morose and taciturn."  I'm not sure where he picked up the phrase, although perhaps I'll reveal its roots in English literature later in this post, depending on my mood.

Well, back to Clark.  When she made her way, as we all do, to kindergarten, she participated in an exercise of writing her own stories.  She was too little to actually write an entire story by hand, but the parent volunteers would swing through and take dictation for the kids, who then would illustrate the stories.  At parent-teacher conferences, the story books would be trotted out (an apt phrase in this case as I may or may not later reveal) as evidence of the brilliance of the beloved child and the dedication of the clever instructor to guide them through this task at such an early age.  When it was our turn, the teacher looked at us suspiciously, and asked Clark's father to perform a dramatic reading of Clark's composition.  It went something like this: I like to play horsie with my Dad.  I ride on his back.  He says the horse's name is Old Glue.  I tell him he is silly, but he says he's morose and taciturn.  The illustrations were not spectacular.  Clark would not have a future in oil painting.  But the teacher was very unhappy that she had to look up words that her kindergarten pupil had written.  A new experience for her clearly.  Clark was nothing if not precocious.

But to my point . . . in my family, being morose and taciturn* was so far from any of our natures that it was always used as a joke.  So imagine my surprise when it was the phrase that popped into my head to describe how I'm doing when queried by an old friend.  I didn't say it out loud.  It's a little pretentious for common conversation (I used to be precocious when I was younger, but at my present age, the best I can hope for is pretentious).  I said something like, "okay" and then burst into tears, which may have given my old friend a bit of a shock.  I found myself being myself and then being overtaken by moroseness and taciturnity.  I may have just made up those words, but I have a masters degree that allows me some leeway in this regard.

Well, that's my point.  I am morose and taciturn.  Really and actually.  And I totally meant for this blogging thing to be comedic.  Sorry.

*Re-read Animal Farm for the quote regarding Benjamin's mood following the death of Boxer.  Re-read it anyway.  It's pretty amazing.  And it will only take you a few hours.  While you're at it, hit up To Kill a Mockingbird and Huck Finn.  A lot of the stuff they forced us to read when we were teenagers was actually good stuff.  Even The Outsiders is a pretty finely crafted tight little story, if a little simple in its approach to morality.