Pedantry

    What does that word mean? Define it. I read some books and magazines as a child growing into adulthood. I also would refer to and imbibe of encyclopedia articles and some essays, through academic pursuits and my own means. Sometimes church activity would bring more literature and knowldge. Shows, films, all kinds of gobbledygook and at times rot would besot my brain.

    I could not remember it all, but there were clear vestiges of the remains of the words, the phrases, the storylines, the meanings. The plots and the plans. Stories, adventures, deeper significances.

    What did math teach me? To think? Great. Thanks for all the logic and the quantifying. Let's take that further, braniacs. Not me. I need to get lost in the word sauce. The salsas of other minds.

    Words and stories beguile us. They have beguiled me. Always. Never stopping, oft times erring.

    Like to my bore of a professor, a man named Bell, at UCLA. Auspicious university, where I found some of my way. I erred with him, saying republic instead of federation. He thought less of me. I should have dressed better, for one. Less sports t-shirts. Impressions mean stuff to people. But then again, he was a blow hard.

    All these years later, the battles rage on. Or the battle rages on. 

    And what is pedantry. What is it? My mind hearkens back to little Mulchen, in the very off radar southern Chile.  1990. A man called my missionary companion and I "pedantes". Which my trainer took affront to, but was this visitor to our fair town right?

    Some would agree with him, that unknown accuser, possibly or probably a communist, or at least a socialist. Even a close one to me that pinged me by telephone this very minute.

    We are pedantic Christian or Latter-Day Saint or Mormon missionaries. Stool pigeons of an ideology or a nationalist cause, or sheer Adam Smith capitalism.

    We are caught up in pedantry, accoring to some.

    Are we? 

    Am I? Am I a pedant. I am pedantic? Sometimes, yes, I admit it.

    What is pedantry?

        I am well into my sixth decade. Is the math right? My birth month, closer to the higher ages of seniorhood. 

    What words have we learned? What phrases have we eexperiences and earned?

    Am I pedantic. Is it all wrong and ill-founded.

    Perhaps not.

    Perhaps we need and are more befit of more pedantry.

    Learn what the words mean.

    And not trivialize them.