They say the first step is admitting you have a problem

Did I mention that I have a certain...well, um...addiction?

No, I suppose not.

For starters, it’s not exactly something that comes up in polite conversation. “So, Sally, let’s talk about my fetish¹...”

Secondly--and probably more germane since I haven’t had the pleasure of actually conversing with most of you--this is my first blog post, so I haven’t yet had the opportunity to tell you all of my dirty little secrets.

I would guess that the title of my blog might have given you a glimpse of the little skeleton lurking in my cupboard, but here it is, in black and white: I, M M Phillips, profess an unnatural love affair with words.

Well, it’s actually dark green on green. I’m also exceedingly fond of (read fixated on) the color green, so of course I had to choose a green background. But I suppose that’s neither here nor there. 

But how does one become a Sesquipedalian, you ask?  Now that’s a very good question.

I don’t know how it works for everyone (maybe I should conduct a scientific study or poll a random sample of people on the street someday), but in my case this condition goes all the way back to my childhood--no I won’t say how many years ago that was. In fact, some of my earliest, and fondest, memories involve words.

Sure, it started off innocently enough with the occasional “mama” and “blankie,” but I quickly learned that these simple sounds garnered a great deal of positive feedback.  Instant gratification²; I was hooked.

But all too soon I found that the easy fix was no longer enough.  I needed more words, bigger words, increasingly potent words, to make me feel good. No longer content to wait for the words to come to me, I began to seek them out, wandering through the tattered pages of sundry paperbacks and even venturing into the depths of such dusty tomes as dictionaries and thesauri.

And thus an obsession was born.

¹Fetish. No, it’s not that sort of thing--get your mind out of the gutter.  It can mean a fixation of any sort, you know.

²Gratification. I like this word; it’s all about those wonderful feelings that come from getting what you want. It conjures up images of creamy slices of cheesecake dripping with mango sauce, romantic moonlit trysts, or shopping bags overflowing with the latest trendy fashions. For me it’s a toss up at any given moment which of these luxuries offers the most gratification: the first or the second. And the third? Eh. I’m not much of a trendsetter.