“Come here a minute, honey,” I heard my Mother call. At that time I would have been about two years old. I was sitting on the ground in the back yard, busily driving nails into the dirt. My daddy’s hammer was so heavy that I had to hold it with both hands. My dad was a carpenter so I always had plenty of nails of all sizes to drive into the ground. I spent hours doing just that. Then with the claw of the hammer I would pull them all out and then start all over again. When my mother called me I was about halfway through driving a nail all the way into the dirt.
“Wait a second,” I called back.
At that moment I heard my older sister, Lois, exclaim, “Mama, did you hear the word Lorine used? She said, ‘second!’ She used the word ‘second!’”
As I looked up Lois came running towards me, swooped me up in her arms, and started loving me and patting me and saying what a smart little girl I was. I had used a big word in my answer to my mother! I had used the word “second!” By that time Mama was in the yard. She took me from my sisters arms and was also telling me how smart I was and what a big word I had used. I did not really know what I had done. But I soon realized that I must have done something great! Then it came to me. I had invented a word! I had invented the word SECOND! I was somebody! All that day different members of my family were talking about my saying “second.”
It must have been two or three years later that my brother, who was three years older than I, came home from school one day to say he had learned to tell time on the clock. He had learned the purpose of the big hand, the little hand, and the “second” hand. What was he doing? He was using my word. He was using the word “second.”
Someone had stolen my word and was teaching it to all the kids in school! How could they do such a thing. Then, standing back and listening to my family talk to G.B. about time, minutes, and seconds, and how they too had learned to tell time, my ego started to deflate. Gradually I realized that I had not invented the word “second.”
I realized that the word had been in use, I guess, forever. I was crushed and hurt. I realized I was not so very special and smart as I thought. It was a terrible experience for me. The hurt only lasted a few days though, because my older brother was trying to teach me to tell time and that gave me a new experience to enjoy.