This Tha Way I Roll...

   I find out things about myself almost continually, for example, I recently discovered the fact that I speak and write in the slang idioms dialect. Who knew? I just always considered myself a 'keeping it real' kind of person...sorta like just speaking the language of the day, real plain. I didn't know it had a name.

   If you will, travel back in time to your high school English class, look in your head, around the dangling participles, past the misplaced modifiers, through the diagrammed gerunds, ah, there they are, idioms. There are colloquial, dialectal, illiterate, and slang idioms. In the 11th grade A-Beka English Handbook in lesson 31.2, it advises me to "avoid idiomatic expressions that smack of triteness". I'm pretty sure I'm guilty of triteness. I'm also pretty sure that the advise given was indeed an idiom itself. In case you have erased the English off the blackboard of your mind, I will remind you that idioms are expressions of a word or a phrase and has a figurative meaning.That's me 2 a T.

   I feel like if we humans mainly use words to express ourselves, that our speech should be colorful with some flava with a punch of a little 'sum-mm sum-mm', some spice, pizazz and I don't mean expletives! Which brings me to my O...extremes. The notion of opposites. Even before the beginning of time, Good v evil, Light v dark, cold v hot, left v right, Love v hate, have been some of the standards for extremes.
  
   Don't you hate it when somebody gets all up in your kool-aid and don't even know the flavor? But, I know the score on this one...'cause, just like you, I have to let God remind me often, that when I 'teeter' or 'totter' there is no balance. We are used to watching extreme sports and desiring an extreme makeover and swooning over extreme homes. Who would want to watch minimal sports? or meager makeovers? or moderate homes? Borrrring. Have you ever watched "Wife Swap"? That's the premise behind the show, extreme wives.

   The medical profession calls this concept, hypo- and hyper-, when your body over or under does something, an imbalance. It's out of order, out of alignment, off kilter, out of whack, askewed. Those are colorful words for sick, but sick is so dull to say. I have some cheese-may to spread...here's what I have found out about the devil...he does not care if you 'teeter' or 'totter' as long as you are doing one of them.

   You probably would say that the seesaw is so much fun to play on, on the playground maybe, in real life...it's a potential body slam on the ground or an inevitable full body toss in the air. There was always that kid standing in the middle of the seesaw though. What was his deal? There we are screaming and hanging on for dear life or getting the breath knocked out of us and there's unadventurous kid in the middle. Balancing in the middle. Is he 'in the know'? I think so!

   The idea behind a seesaw is: a board with two ends of extreme and a middle of balance, tru dat (interpretation is: duh!). But a wonderful lesson is hidden under the board, the balancer, the equalizer.
 When we can't say no and we take on more than we can possibly do but we want to be everything to everybody and we end up neglecting our own at home...teeter. When we don't have a problem at all saying no, to the point that it's all about you...totter. When we live on see-food, everything we see we eat...teeter. When we are so rigorous about what we eat that an iota counts as a calorie...totter. Give-give-give...teeter. Take-take-take...totter.

   When I allow myself to learn the way of the seesaw and I agree with it not, I won't live with comedy/tragedy, waxing/waning, mountains/valleys, my life won't smack with triteness. I want the middle, not a ditch on either side. I want harmony, not rage or passivity. I want enough, not all or nothing. I want development, not kudzu style or stunted growth. I think the kid in the middle knew that life could body slam you or throw you for a loop, all because of the way we decide we want to roll. The stabilizing factor lured him to the center. When I've decided I wanted to go extreme, I've been flung afar off base.

   So...(add beat box here)...come on all you idioms...I'm through expressin' my i-deaoms...they're food for thought...they can't be bought...and I hope tha message will be caught...here we go...here we go...3-2-1, let's do it...say...this tha way we roll, we roll...this tha way we go, we go, to the left? no!...to the right? no!...keepin' straight ya'll...keepin' straight.