Later, George

I was sitting at my computer at 4:15 am, my bedtime long past. Actually, I was only three hours from the time when I would be waking. The TV was on for background noise, but I was only listening occasionally. All of a sudden I hear George Carlin's voice. As I have always been a fan of Carlin's, I pricked up my ears, ready for that brand of irreverent wit that only he could deliver. It was only when I lifted my eyes to the screen and I saw the tribute graphic, that I realized what had happened. George Carlin was dead of heart failure, no less. Nihilist and truth teller extraordinaire, George Carlin had finally stepped off this mortal coil. Life would go on as life does but I had lost someone very dear to me in a way.

George Carlin had been enamored with words since he was a child. As he explained it in one of the last interviews he did on 20/20, his mother instilled his love of words. She would send him to get her a paper each day and when he returned, she would introduce a new word to him. The first word he remembered learning was to peruse. He came in with the paper and she said she was going to peruse it. He didn't know what that meant so she sent him off to check the dictionary. The next day, he brought the paper and he would use the word he'd learned. It was something along the lines of 'here's the paper for you to peruse." His mother would then say, 'thank you, I think I will take a cursory glance and off he went to check under the c's for cursory and so it went.

I looked on him as a kinsman of sorts since I've been in love with words since I can remember. The first book I ever owned was a pocket-sized binder dictionary. I remember reading that dictionary as if it were a book. I always felt an oddity because where I grew up not a lot of people had a lot of use for a lot of words. You said what you had to say and you didn't take all day doing it. My mother, like Carlin's mother did, first piqued my interest in the written word. She was a reader. Though she had never finished high school, she'd read anything she could get her hands on. It was my desire to, like she, perch languidly on the couch with a book a glass of icy lemonade sweating into a paper towel taking sips only rarely because I was so engaged in what I was reading. My mother explained that words have the power to transport you to anyplace you want to go.

I've loved George Carlin's wit and audacity since I was a little girl. Upon hearing George Carlin's "The Seven Words You Can't Say on Television," I knew for sure I'd found a kindred spirit. I wasn't so much shocked at the words because I come from a family of cussers. I'd probably heard most of those words by breakfast. He aid the things I thought but knew better than to say.

That was his shtick; telling it like it was. As it turns out it wasn't shtick, that is who he was. For better or worse he left his imprint on the world. Oddly enough,, I don't have the words to say goodbye, so it's just later for now.