It’s not a word you hear very often, or did, even back when I was a kid. I must have learned it first from those Archie comic books, to me baffling, unfunny, but riveting as a preview of life down the road in high school.
Well, I was a young fool. High school was nothing like that. No Jughead, hanger-on with his inexplicable serrated hat, or grim Miss Grundy embodying Monday, or sassy and glossy Veronica Lodge with her sleek moneyed sneer. No kind but clueless lovelorn Betty who was perpetually blind to her own beauty.
Especially no irrepressible Archie, all geeked-out freckles and tomato-red hair but with some real spark or flare of talent, like skinny Mick Jagger without the strut or sexual glare. Still, Archie fronted a band, had a car, and that was enough to make him a star. Just a paper construct. Never met one like him.
After college, though, I was briefly married to a red-haired guy, Jeff, who imitated Ry Cooder by playing slide guitar. He had a rusty yellow car that turned over and over but usually died in the driveway. There was too much to fix, I guess. And there I was, inside the house, a lovelorn bride who secretly cried, who tried to be kind, tried to steer toward a happy ending over the bumpy road of his manic ups and downs.
We could never get to a higher gear. I left after he claimed to be addicted to me. He could not metabolize his fear, and later, his father told me, he simply slid off the rails on an excess of something poisonous, just as pernicious as sugar.