"If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to
despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are
performed not by strength, but perseverance." -Samuel Johnson
"What this power is I cannot say; all I know is that it exists and it becomes available only when a man is in that state of mind in which he knows exactly what he wants and is fully determined not to quit until he finds it." -Alexander Graham Bell
"What this power is I cannot say; all I know is that it exists and it becomes available only when a man is in that state of mind in which he knows exactly what he wants and is fully determined not to quit until he finds it." -Alexander Graham Bell
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Okay,
I have to admit, I was struggling a little bit with the letter I. So, I resorted to the dictionary. The way I see it, if you are going to take
some time to pull out the dictionary for this challenge, you do not waste your
time with some nickel or dime word. You go for the full fifty-cent
word.
So
I am dedicating this post to the song "I'll Whip Ya Head
Boy" by American
rapper, entrepreneur, investor, record producer, and actor - Curtis James
Jackson the Third (a/k/a Fifty Cent).
No, not that Fifty Cent, silly.
My Fifty Cent word de jour is ideopraxist. A word that is so
Fifty Cent that Microsoft Word doesn’t even recognize it as a real word. But, it is.
Ideopraxist:
n. One who is impelled to act by the force
of an idea; one who devotes his energies to the carrying out of an idea.
If you read
my earlier post on the The Future Demise of Sheriff Woody, the definition of ideopraxist might
sound familiar to you. Ah, yes. Our Little Man is certainly an ideopraxist. He gets an idea in his
head, and he is determined to fulfill it.
Recently,
it was the mall. Thanks to the Model Me Going Places app on the iPad,
the Little Man got the idea in his head of going to the mall. About two weeks ago, I came home for work and
the requests started: “I want to go bye-byes
in the car to the mall.”
The
Little Man has a significant communication impairment, so a meaningful back and
forth communication is almost impossible.
“What do you want to do at the mall,”
we asked. No response. We gave him a prompting phrase, “At the mall,
I want to get _________.” No response.
It’s hard to get there on a week day school
night, but he persists patiently placing his request the next night, the night after,
and the night after that. So cute. So sweet.
Finally it’s the weekend and it’s time for some daddy and me time at the
mall. I had no idea what he wanted at
the mall. Another set of planets? Another
set of stackable rings? Nope.
We rode up and down the escalators a couple
times. Then we rode up and down the elevators.
Then, we went in and out of a couple of stores. Then, he was ready to go home. No purchases, no demands, no requests. Turns out, he just wanted to experience what
he saw the little boy doing on the app.
What a wonderful story! Thank you for sharing -- both the word and your experience with your son. :)
ReplyDeletetouching recount with your son. Thank you for sharing. P.s. I check out the dictionary too!!
ReplyDeleteHm, I think I can be a bit of an ideopraxist myself at times. For example, I am so ready to give up on the A-Z challenge. It is taking up way more of my time than I anticipated. But, I signed up to do it. I can't just stop, right. So, as tempting as it may be to drop out, my brain just won't let me off the hook.
ReplyDeleteI wonder what else the "Model Me Going Places" app has in store for you all!
Aww, that is so cute! Ideopraxist is a fantastic word! I love learning new words.
ReplyDeleteIdeopraxist...isn't that what we writers do a lot of the time. Act on the impetus of an idea to create a full-blown story! :)
ReplyDeleteI love that word and will make a point of using it. Thank you so much for introducing us :)
ReplyDeleteRhia from Five Minute Piece for Inspiration (around # 800 on the A through Z list)