We were enjoying KLSR-TV’s annual Christmas dinner, and the traditional gift steal game began. The first opened gift, promptly snatched by newslady Natasha Chughtai, was a leopard-patterned snuggie.

Those blankets with arms looked kind of nifty on the infomercials. I whispered to Tim I wouldn’t mind having it. He winked and gave me total discretion when our gift number came up.

I suppose it was my annual free-Margarita glow. Wobbling over in high heels, I held out my hand to poor Natasha, who had stashed the snuggie under her table. But the gift was still up for grabs by the game rules. It could be stolen once more. I got it.

Later I felt badly and told Natasha with all sincerity she could have it back, but she laughed and said keep it. She was happy with her glowing wall stickers or whatever gift she finally got (my brain was still fuzzy at the time).

Now of an evening I am saved in the recliner from cold and our cat Westley’s heavy shedding. I can scratch beneath his purring chin while under cover. In fact, he sees me grabbing the snuggie from the closet and he’s in position to pounce and commence kneading my chest. I sigh, deflect claws carefully, and reflect on the one time in my life crime paid.

Though on the outside, wasting

(perishing, decaying, you fill in the blank),

the inward me is renewed day by day.

~Paul of Tarsus

What has renewed you?

I found out I had been doing it. My dear teacher, Mrs. Love (I couldn’t have made that up), noticed how my face scrunched during math time, as I tried to make out problems on the board. She reported this to my parents.

There’s little doubt how it happened. Like most kids, I had a bedtime. For us first-generation TV children the schedule easily corresponded with programs. (I will always associate the closing music of some shows – Flipper, Get Smart, Bonanza, Lost in Space – with having to go to bed.) Before second grade we moved to a remodeled, older parsonage next door to the church, with an entryway and a grand (at least it was grand to us) staircase. Each night after TV I dragged myself slowly up the carpeted stairs to my room at the top landing. If I was lucky, I had remembered to close my window shades earlier; if not, there was blackness outside where an alien face might be lurking.

After tugging down the shades, slipping on my nightie, and rearranging a dozen stuffed toys on my bed, I was out with the light. Or was I?

The hall light remained on, comforting my brothers in their room. In its dim illumination I found my greatest comfort, reading the book from beneath my pillow. I knew I shouldn’t stay up reading, and so it was a thrill. I also dreaded the coming new day, because, despite Mrs. Love and the chalkboard smell and the bright green shrubs outside our class window, I had issues with school. It was a weird thing to do, going away from my home and my mommy and brothers each morning. Wearing a dress, as well, making every day except Saturday a bit of torture.

Stories kept my heart and mind alive; I couldn’t resist them. Later, after the optometrist fitted my first pair of glasses, my parents discovered my reading habits and gave me a bedside desk with a lamp. But I was already ultra-myopic.

Somehow, though, nearsightedness has helped me hang onto my own space and the thrill of being just me. It cocoons me at the swimming pool, where I still remove even my contacts before going under water. I know then what it would be like to be legally blind. And I’m not worried about it. Always seeing beyond my nose is overrated. Squinting doesn’t help, but still I do so, when my dear husband appears to be approaching. I like letting him into my world.

I thought I would start featuring one tasty morsel of language per week – like a Hershey’s kiss for the mind. Of course, these will have something to do with me, this being the place where I go on and on about me. But if anyone wants to add their own word that is a favorite, brings back memories, captures a story’s glimmer, or something, feel free.

Today’s word: trek.

I knew the meaning before fourth grade, having come across it in dog stories, I’m sure, but if I’m remembering right, the year I was nine we discovered Star Trek. Uncle Tim visited our home. He was the coolest uncle because, all of fourteen himself, he paid us attention. Uncle Tim urged us to watch this great space show with a neat alien guy who had pointy ears and green blood.

After we became Trek fans, I owned a new reason to feel superior. No one else in fourth grade could say the show’s name. They thought they could. “Beam me up, Scotty, like on Star Track!” they’d call across the playground. I smirked. They were idiots.

If this had been first grade, I would have lorded my correct English over them, as I had in Oklahoma, trying to teach neighborhood boys where we lived not to say “ain’t.” But by now I recognized it was pointless to put yourself out there. People, I was learning, didn’t care in general about using language correctly. They also were likely to call me names. Smarty pants and so on. I had become aware of the crowd, the uneducated masses, and I respected their power.

It would be more than a decade before I decided it might have been nicer growing up to live in a less high and mighty bubble around other kids. Maybe I could have been more friendly, less off in my imagination despising my fellow humans. By then I guessed I hadn’t followed the Star Trek spirit very well. And I struggled, like that alien guy with the pointy ears often did, to try learning to play well with others.