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Repetitions, repetitive redundancies

At my age, I need to start my day with a few repetitions, though they’re not the sort you might imagine.

I admire those hardy folks who slide out of bed, moving smoothly into the push-up position before doing a few — repetitions.

But that’s not the way I wake up, and those aren’t the repetitions that bring me ’round to face the day:

“Up, Up, Up — It’s Time to Get Up!

These are the repetitions that get me upright, but it doesn’t stop there, repetition-wise. I continue to rely on redundancies to smooth my stride over the bumps so common in a typical day’s travel.

Take, for example, an advance warning. All warnings should be in advance. What good is a warning received after the fact? The advance warning provides a senior citizen like me with a chance to avoid negative stigmas and tough challenges.

Negative stigmas happen when three stigmas are subtracted from two, resulting in a negative answer — the type of answer one is likely to receive from a senior discussing the current political situation.

The tough challenge is a challenge that came from the wrong side of the tracks and is often confused with adverse obstacles and difficult dilemmas, both of which also reside there.

All these issues can be avoided with an advance warning.

An advance warning can also save you from being victimized by a deliberate lie. The deliberate lie is more forthright than an incidental lie, but both are based on a false premise — a false premise being the worst kind of premise — one that’s not true!

Be also aware of the deceitful lie, the deceptive lie, and lies told for power and money. They travel in a crowd with the deliberate lie, and are known to gang up to enslave a careless reader.

If you are a reader who receives an advance warning of an impending lie, carefully consider each and every aspect of that warning to gain a full and complete understanding.

Only through understanding can a lie be brought to a full stop.

From that position, you are less likely to return back or stumble forward, accidentally repeating again the former mistake you almost made.

Of course, it’s best to avoid all this stuff in the first place.

Some seniors try to accomplish this by assuming the stance of an innocent bystander. Indeed, many seniors excel at appearing innocent. Still, it never works out for long, as innocent bystanders are people inexperienced in the ways of the world. Seniors have experienced too much of this world to play the innocent for long. Some old experience always comes and gives their lack of innocence away.

Could a big wooden stick help? Sticks made of wood are preferred by four out of five naturalists. If you’re lucky, you could receive one as a free gift.

Perceptive reader — please excuse my not providing you an advanced warning of this column’s tautologies. A tautology is an expression whose modifying language repeats the meaning of the word being modified. Tautologies can give English teachers and readers headaches — but they can also be fun.

This column is not quite completely finished. Completely finished is what follows after one is almost totally done and being almost totally done is where I’m at now.

Before I leave, I want to tell you the source of this column’s repetitive redundancies — its tautologies — a little volume entitled “Armed Gunmen, True Facts, and Other Ridiculous Nonsense,” by Professor Richard Kallan of California State University at Pamona. Professor Kallan worked with my best friend and Alpena native, Professor John Kaufman. I suspect many of you will remember John. He worked for one summer as a reporter for The Alpena News – many years ago.

Professor Kallan’s book is a resource I turn to from time to time to get me through; when I do, I obtain an interlude of pleasure.

A copy can be obtained by googling “Richard A. Kallan — Amazon.com”.

Doug Pugh’s “Vignettes” runs weekly on Saturdays. He can be reached at pughda@gmail.com.

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