Pits and Sparks

Today was National Apricot Day. The word apricot is related to the word precocious, because it's an early-ripening fruit. And what muse, I wonder, inspired Yip Harburg to come up with the line, "Who put the ape in apricot" in the Cowardly Lion's coronation number? Nowadays, he might have written, "Who put the app in apricot?". In any case they're a very nice soft-skinned fruit with a nuzzlable texture and a color that is best described as apricot. And when dried they look and feel like tender little ears. And you can anagram "an apricot" to make "Tropicana."

Yesterday (we just jumped over to tomorrow) was also National Static Electricity Day. Having spent fifteen minutes the other day picking about a hundred fragments of Kleenex off T-shirts and flannel shirts fresh from the dryer, only to have many of the tissue bits leap back to the fabric like caped fleas, I don't feel like shuffling my feet on the carpet and making sparks fly from my fingertips in celebration. But I will say this:

I speak of static
electricity
without ecstatic
specificity.
It raises my hackles
when it crackles.