I love the word bastard. I tell people it's a great word. I'm not certain what lead me to this word but I like it. I have some friends that are 100% true bastards and I've complimented them on it. I, as life would have it, am only half bastard. That's what I tell people. Bastard means a child whose parents weren't married. Not a big deal of a definition but a very cool word in my opinion. Speaking of cool words, the first cool word I remember liking and proclaiming to the world as such is hemorrhoids. I heard the world on a commercial as a child and it began, as far as I can remember, my pleasure in hearing and saying certain words more than others; one word poems, so to speak. Hemorrhoids is a very neat sounding word that deserves a much more interesting definition. Seriously, just say hemorrhoids a couple of times and let the word fall out of your mouth. As for me, my biological parents were married for two years before they had me and then were not divorced until a year later, as I recall. So, you are thinking, "then you can't be a bastard." But wait, there's more. Somehow, the divorced ex-groom managed to get a Catholic annulment of the marriage all that time after the fact. I don't know much about Catholicism but the idea of that annulment seems a bit silly to me. None the less, I reap some small reward from it as I now say, perhaps not with complete accuracy, that according to at least one church organization on earth I am a BASTARD!
Few people seem to be as enamored with the word bastard as I... or hemorrhoids for that matter. But tonight, I saw the movie Sunshine Cleaning. Interesting movie. A couple of sisters become the kind of cleaners that are called in after someone dies. The son of one sister asks the other, his aunt, what a bastard is because he was called one. My ears totally perked up. And the aunt had a neat answer that went something to the effect of: "It just means your parents weren't married, no big deal. You totally pull it off and you can use it to attract girls when you're older. You are the coolest bastard I ever met." Excellent. I'm paraphrasing from memory here so my quotes could be a bit off but, "You are the coolest bastard I have ever met" has got to be one of the best compliments an aunt could give to her nephew.