Good Words

"Gee we've got a lot of meds." I said to my wife searching for the vitamins. I didn't actually say "Gee", but I'm in a bit of a G-Rated mood today. (Pun . . . freakishly intended.)

However what I was looking for wasn't in the primary medicine location.

"I'll check the secondary pharmacy." She had of course stopped listening to me at this point, but I continued my search. And my talking to myself.

"Not here either. I'll go check the tertiary pharmacy."

For those of you not familiar with where we stash medicines throughout the house, the primary location would be the locked hutch where we also keep cereal and canned tomatoes. The secondary location is in the cabinet right above the dishwasher. Its high up and difficult to get to if you're a five year old with a stool and a mission. The tertiary location is the medicine cabinet in the master bathroom where we keep mostly Q-Tips and underarm deodorant.

I never found the vitamins, but I did remind myself the word "Tertiary"

Its words like "Tertiary" that can literally keep the song writer's mind spinning for days.

First, how would I use it? When would I use it? What does it sound like being sung? What rhymes with it? Does anyone know what it means? Do I file it under cool words I hope to use some day, or does it go in the lyrical gymnastics pile?

These are important questions a lyrical writer must ask his/her self any time an interesting word falls in his or her lap.

The first two questions are usually pretty easy.

How would I use it?

Any way I want.

When would I use it?

Whenever I felt like it.

Does it sing well?

Not especially, but it does have a nice melodic ring and aside from the beginning TER, each of the syllables end in very suitable vowel sounds. Sh EEE Air EEE. Now I just have to find a rhyming scheme and a story to fix it to. This shouldn't be too much of a problem. I've written songs built around a single word before, but that was in the theater. IndiePop might frown on building a song around a word that doesn't have much modern use.

Besides, as of this last hour, the only thing I've found to rhyme with "Tertiary" is "Were she hairy"

as in "Were she hairy, I may ask her to wear longer pants."

But really . . . who talks like that?

I could get away with the near rhyme.

Mercenary. Obituary. Sedentary. Any A-R-Y would do. But that's cheating. And even though I'm not above cheating in any respect, I think that a word like tertiary needs to fall under the category of lyrical gymnastics, in which case the rhyme has to be pure and the subject of the song has to connect.

I may spend a few more days on this one.

It might only be a couplet, but what if that couplet turned into a verse.

Can a pop chorus use the word "Tertiary?"

Probably not. But I'm keeping my notebook handy at all times.

I tell this story to my wife who looks at me lovingly.

"You know what word I keeping seeing?" she says. "Suss."

"Suss?"

"Yeah, suss."

"hmm. That's much easier to rhyme."

I'll have to look up what it means.