Truncky the Word Stalker

Did you know that it's possible to have a word stuck in your head? Apparently it is.

The word truncated has been stalking me for days. I don't know where I may have heard or read it that it managed to stick itself so firmly in my brain, but it even managed to survive a cross-country flight, its presence in tact.

I had to look it up. It means "shortened by or as if by having a part cut off; cut short."

The other night I came over to the house to spend one of my final evenings with my tribe before it will violently be truncated with Leslie's departure in January. My purpose that evening was clearly to spend every remaining nanosecond possible with my dear friend Leslie. I failed. Ben and I got to talking about whether the kitchen should have black bamboo rugs (I'm leaning more toward "yes" after seeing Angela's red one), and accidentally began to shift attention away from Leslie in the process.

Now Leslie knows that we love her more than we love bamboo runners. Leslie knows that we each love her probably more than we could love any inanimate object (although we both do have a certain affection for the new living room rug). But Leslie felt that she deserved far more attention than, well, pretty much anything else.

So she hid. When we came back from the kitchen, there was no Leslie to be found. We searched high and low--attic to laundry room--no closet unopened, no stone unturned. Ben checked the garage. He forgot to check if her car was there. He thought it wasn't. How could she have driven away without our noticing? So he checked again. No, the car was there.

Where is Leslie?

I began to search more thoroughly in the dark and scary basement, which isn't really that dark and scary, except when you're in a cold corner and Ben startles you when you turn around.

"Maybe we should stick together," he said. To which I hastily agreed, absurd though it was.

Together we approached the cupboard. We came near with the intention of checking to see if Leslie was inside.

So when Ben reached out to open the door, it shouldn't have startled me at all when he pulled open the door to a resounding "Rrrraaaaaaaaarrrrrrrr!!!!!" from the Leslie within. But it did. A lot.

We found Leslie. She'd hidden because she wanted attention. That was my suspicion throughout the whole searching process. Finding Leslie in the cupboard confirmed it.

"Choose me. Love me," Leslie said by hiding.

I didn't even mean to use truncated in this story. It just sort of came out of me in the telling, like when Phoebe on Friends has the spirit of her old woman massage client who died on the table inside of her, and she suddenly comes out of her, and Phoebe says, "Oh, okay, she's gone." I hope to glory that truncated is acting like Leslie, and now that I've paid him so much mind, he'll kindly shut up.

Er, I mean, kindly be content. And leave me alone. And quit hiding in the cupboard of my mind.

Are you happy, Truncky?