random truths – Day 1,001 (Tuesday) – 1,001 nights

The day after the 1,000 bits of writing, the thing that was stuck in my head was "1,001 nights." Except in my head, it was less about the collection of Arabian fairy tales 1,001 Nights (also known as Arabian Nights). 

Instead of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves or Aladdin's Wonderful Lamp, my head kept appending it as One Thousand and One Night Stands, the title of an autobiography of Ted Shawn, “America’s greatest male dancer.” I read it while in high school and mostly remember it as being about a touring with the dance company and sleeping in a different town every night. Whether this is an accurate memory is debatable. But the idea of being on the road and living out of a suitcase for 1,001 nights sounds awful to me. 

Then my brain changes the pacing of the words and it becomes “one thousand and one nightstands” and imagines row upon row of night tables and ponders how much physical space would be required to hold that many pieces of furniture.

The next evolution becomes “one thousand one-night stands,” which seems like it would be quite a lot of one-nighters and I have to wonder if I know anyone who has that kind of stamina and track record. But if we’re talking about Wilt Chamberlain and his claim of sleeping with 20,000 women, then 1,001 is less intriguing.

This happens a lot – playing with words, the accent, and phrasing. I remember once when I was a kid and saw the word “canary” and couldn’t figure out if it was pronounced like the bird and the color “canary yellow” or was it actually “cannery row,” a place I heard of in a movie, but did not see in print until much later.

This is how I amuse myself sometimes when doing the laundry or changing the sheets or cleaning the house. Small entertainments can be the stuff that get a person through a day. Canary, cannery. Po-tay-to, po-tah-to.