Addiction

I became addicted to adjectives when I wrote my first story in fourth grade. My teacher raved about my descriptive powers. Encouraged by her praise, I began to collect adjectives like some people collect stamps. They became my drug of choice and I loaded my writing with them. Eventually, the addiction proved debilitating as addictions do, but like all addicts, I was unaware.

So imagine my shock in my first college creative writing class when I encountered a professor who preferred verbs and nouns. On my first assignment, he politely noted: “Lovely imagery, Miss Harris. You use language beautifully, but I suggest pruning the adjectives. Concentrate on strong verbs and nouns.”

We addicts are notorious for our denial, so I ignored him. By mid-semester his polite suggestions had taken on an edgy, caustic tone with notes like “Too many adjectives bloat your work” and “Wordiness is not a virtue, Miss Harris.” Finally, on a poem I wrote about a ruby-cheeked milkmaid, he spewed: “Miss Harris, your milkmaid is burdened with buckets of adjectives that are sloshing over the sides. She’s never going to make it from the barn to the farmhouse. Give her a break. Lighten the load. If nothing else, kill the cow producing this mush.”

Confronted thus, I became obstinate and sullen. At the next class, I glared at him as he lectured. He was young and handsome, tall and tanned, with a broad-shouldered, athletic build. He sauntered back and forth in graceful strides, running his hands through thick coal black hair that draped fetchingly over his high, smooth forehead. His piercing blue eyes radiated a sultry, seductive magnetism. His hands with their long, elegant fingers sliced the air like fan blades to emphasize his words. He was divine, irresistible as a plump ripe peach, and his magnificence only magnified my aggravation.

He had paused in front of my desk when suddenly I felt a movement at my feet and noticed that my thesaurus had slipped from a pocket of my backpack and lay open on the floor. I watched amazed as an army of adjectives rose from its pages and hurtled in hordes toward my professor. A platoon led by two brothers named rebellious and vengeful leaped upon his trouser cuffs and climbed his legs. Adjectives attacked from all directions, led by grizzled veterans with names like ugly, bald, beaked, sallow, gnarled, faded. They swarmed him, crawled through his hair, pounced on his shoulders.

In minutes, he transformed into a geriatric, stooped old geezer who moved with the halting step of a hunchback. His face was sallow and pocked, his once noble Roman nose now beaked and bulbous. His bald head sported sparse white wisps of fuzz. His faded watery eyes peered out bleakly while his gnarled hands clawed at the air.

Astonished, I gazed at my now decrepit professor dressed in the shabby rags and remnants of all the adjectives that I had finally gotten rid of—all, that is, except triumphant and gratified. They sat on top of my head waving and smiling.

Copyright 2009 Susan Matthewson