Xerxes
X is a tough one y’all. It’s probably the bane of every alphabet-themed project out there. No good x animals if you’re doing an alphabet zoo – no good x foods or flavors or flowers. Not many famous x people.
In a completely-unrelated-to-the-alphablog manner I came across a movie called PiGS (their caps, not mine). I was IMBD-ing an actor I thought I recognized on a FaLaLaLaLifetime Christmas movie (we already covered my low standards in this regard. Let’s try to move past it), and found PiGS on his filmography. It’s about a college guy who tries to sleep with a girl for every letter of the alphabet (by last names). The x girl turns out to be the Holy Grail…and the one he falls in love with (naturally). “You can’t be serious,” you’re probably thinking. Me too. But also, “I HEAR YA ABOUT THE X, FELLA.”
If PiGS is my least-favorite alphabetty work of art (not that I watched it, I SWEAR), my most favorite is one of Edward Lear’s “Nonsense Poems” about the alphabet called “A Was Once an Apple Pie.” I had it in an old old book of my dad’s – a Better Homes & Gardens collection of poems and stories. I loved that book. It was giant and kind of smelled weird, but reading it always felt like a special occasion. It also included “The Owl and the Pussycat,” a story about an old lady and her escaping pig (that included the word “stile” which I’d never known) and an incredibly ethnically-insensitive story called “Little Black Sambo” about tigers that turn into butter. The alphabet was my favorite though – especially the x – but I’ll copy u-z for you here…because they’re all pretty hard letters to negotiate (except for w, wonderfully wide w):
U was once a little urn,
Urny, Burny, Turny, Urny
Bubbly-burny Little Urn!
V was once a little vine,
Viny, Winy , Twiny, Viny
Twisty-twiny Little Vine!
W was once a whale,
Whaly, Scaly, Shaly, Whaly
Tumbly-taily Mighty Whale!
X was once a great king Xerxes,
Xerxy, Perxy, Turxy, Xerxy
Linxy Lurxy Great King Xerxes!
Y was once a little yew,
Yewdy Fewdy Crudy Yewdy
Growdy, grewdy, Little Yew!
Z was once a piece of zinc,
Tinky , Winky, Blinky, Tinky
Tinkly Minky Piece of Zinc!
It was even illustrated, this poem…and through the wonders of the internet, here’s a peek at old Xerxes himself:
So scary! And nothing at all to indicate anything about who Xerxes was…but still. Such a way better selection than xylophone or x-ray. I want to start trying to fit “Linxy Lurxy” into my vocabulary RIGHT NOW. Also, “bubbly-burny little urn” is so deliciously sinister right there in the middle of all this nonsense, isn’t it?
I’m so one of THOSE PEOPLE who, when she saw the You’ve Got Mail scene where Kathleen Kelly tells Joe Fox, “When you read a book as a child, it becomes a part of your identity in a way that no other reading in your whole life does,” I was all OH MY GOSH YOU ARE SO RIGHT. And thus: X will always be great king Xerxes…whoever he is.
