Picture if you will, a dessert dreamland; I’m talking Willy Wonka magnitude. Colorful decorations and Tiffany-style light fixtures, small round tables reminiscent of just about any classic ice cream cafe, and the rich smell of chocolate, ice cream, and everything sweet in world all right through the tight New York City street-side door of Serendipity. I’m probably overstating the grandiosity of the place, but in my childhood memories, this place might as well have been Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. It’s the place where parents brought their kids to celebrate, grown-ups went to feel like kids again, and tourists came to check out the hype and satiate a sweet tooth. You could find burgers and sandwiches and maybe some other lunch fair, but everyone really came for the desserts. Serendipity was known (still is) for the Frrrozen Hot Chocolate (and yes, that’s how they spell it on the menu). It’s hard to describe this seemingly one-of-a-kind dessert in a way that does it justice, so I won’t even try. Most anyone has enough reference to imagine what it would be like. Think that and then think 10 times better. Suffice to day, it was well worth the brain freeze to sip off this bigger-than-your-head deliciousness until you were subdued into a bloated-bellied sugar coma (again, so worth it).
If you ever take a trip to NYC and you’re a fan of ice cream and frozen desserts you can hide behind, I highly recommend you stop by Serendipity. But why this walk down memory lane? It’s really about the word: serendipity. I like it. No, I love it. Five quick rolling syllables that ibbity-bibbity off the tongue, especially the final three. First half of the word all above the line and the second half dipping below, it has two general meanings, which are directly related. In short, one means lucky or good fortune, and the other means an occurrence of events by chance in a happy way. In summary, the word basically means lucky, wouldn’t you say? Serendipitous, fortuitous, lucky. That’s how I always felt when from the time I was probably about 5 through ten or eleven, my parents took my sister and me to Serendipity.
And now you’re wondering what all of this has to do with the prompt…
It amazes me how experiences are so powerful in building vocabulary, knowledge, and schema. (I know I sound like a teacher, but some things just can’t be helped.) The experience of Serendipity made it so easy for me always to remember the word and what it means. It’s a meaning by association, not by dictionary, and it is not exact but it is concrete. It’s actually the way we want young people to learn word meanings so they can internalize, own and collect words to use across contexts. But I diverge. All of this had me thinking about an interesting prompt. Use it if it works, or perhaps my walk down memory lane will take you in another direction.
Think about a word that has strong memory or imagery for you. You think of this word and you always create a certain picture in your mind for it based on experience, or you hear a certain song or voice, or you smell the same aroma. you understand. What do you experience through your senses immediately as word association. For the writing exercise, use it to inspire a vivid imagery poem, a memoir or story, or just share the thoughts and feelings about the word in an interesting way. For example, what I did above is just a think out loud of the experience. I might use it to write a story in the setting of Serendipity, or to write an ode to the delicious Frrrozen Hot Chocolate dessert of my childhood.
Do what ever you want, fellow word nerds. Think of a word and get creative. Perhaps you will encounter a word serendipitously that will send you right where you need to go! Ok, that was bad but so what. Have fun….
In case you were curious, here are a couple of pics of the famous dessert I nabbed from reviews online:
No comments:
Post a Comment