The Word of the Day is...
another breakfast with Billy Wayne and Joe Eddy
Dateline: Wednesday, Downtown Diner, East Texas town, you pick the year.
At their usual table near the picture window overlooking Main Street, Billy Wayne and Joe Eddy study the menu they have memorized. Lucille the Waitress already knows what each will order and has placed the order with the short-order cook before she saunters to the table to go through the formality of taking their order.
They will each eat what she puts in for them, despite what they claim to want, because she knows them and she knows what’s best for them, of course.
Says Joe Eddy to Billy Wayne, “Did you ever know the word logomachy? I get this ‘word of the day’ thing in my email, and this is the first one I've never heard or read before.”
Billy Wayne, furrowed brow, replies, “Don’t think so. How would a word like that be spelled?”
Joe Eddy: “You spell it l-o-g-o-m…achy.”
Billy Wayne: “No wonder it ends in ‘achy'. Hurts my head just to think about it.”
Joe Eddy: “Yeah. I feel ya.”
Lucille the Waitress, warming up their coffees and advising breakfast will be out soon, says, “I suppose you had a reason to introduce this God-awful word to the otherwise peaceful morning?”
Joe Eddy grins: “Pull up a chair, darlin’. May as well. You are so efficient, you’ve worked yourself into idleness and eavesdropping.”
Lucille the Waitress: “I like to be on my feet, so I can wade out when it gets too deep with you two.”
Joe Eddy laughs.
“Fair enough. So, anyhow, I was thinking about the word because we often erupt into argument at this table.”
Billy Wayne: “So, it is a ten-dollar word for argument? Why would even a language nerd waste time inventing a word as useless as that?”
Lucille the Waitress, carrying plates, balancing them with the elegance of a ballerina, sets their breakfast before them and says, “For once, I think Billy Wayne is right.”
Billy Wayne smirks.
Joe Eddy: “The word means ‘an argument about words.’ I thought that was ironic or something like that. You have to use words to argue about words, and that may be the only thing left for us to argue over.”
Billy Wayne: “What"? Words?”
Lucille the Waitress: “Well, this is a half-hour of life I can never get back. Good grief, Joe Eddy. Good! Grief!”
Silence, except for the faint sounds of chewing and the slurping of coffee.
Lucille the Waitress: “Whose turn is it to pay?”
Billy Wayne and Joe Eddy in unison: “His.”
Lucille the Waitress: “No argument there. I will charge you both.”
Billy Wayne: “Give yourself a nice tip while you’re at it.”
Lucille the Waitress: “No logomachy there! Shoo.”
They don their hats. Billy Wayne, his ranch-weary Stetson cowboy hat, and Joe Eddy, his Silverbelly Stetson fedora, and they do. They shoo.
“See you tomorrow,” they sing out.
Lucille the Waitress: “Not if I see you first!”
Author’s Note
Billy Wayne and Joe Eddy are characters inspired by two men I saw one morning while having coffee with my grandfather. Billy Wayne is a tall, rugged Texas farmer, and Joe Eddie is a stout, meaty businessman. Lucille the Waitress could easily fit into any roadside diner. Since they are fictional, I reserve the right to put them into any era, but always in the morning over coffee with Lucille attending to them. Here is the first in the series, if you want context.