The Legend

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"One-N-Jen" Explained: It started many years ago, I would even say when I was first born. My mother loved the name Jennifer,but the bumps of the 2 N's irritated her. For practical reasons she spelled my name with a single N. I enjoy the artful look of the revised name. The only flaw is that I always have to correct people when they write it. My tale begins on an average day; a day of correction. I was amending my name for the billionth time when I created the masterpiece; an easy way for people to remember the spelling. The ingenuity was a stroke of luck and was an accident. "I am a One-N-Jen," I stated. It was then that the nickname velcroed itself to me. So it is: I am a One "N" kind of Jen.

Monday, March 22, 2010

The Ultimate Bet

Why are the 26 letters of our language named the Alphabet? Perhaps there significance in the name "ALPHABET."

The Alphabet.
The Alpha-bet.
The Alpha Bet.
The Ultimate Bet.

Fascinating. Maybe that is the underlaying message. There seems to be a story behind this name. I suspect that the group of Language-Deciders got together and had to figure out the structure of the written language. They agreed that there must be a specific number of letters that could be used and no other letters could be invented after the set number was voted on.

So the Language-Deciders began to debate the number of letters. They debated for long hours, yet nothing was decided. Finally a fragile old woman in the back of the assembly stood up and declared in a loud voice, "Let us place a bet. We shall place a bet on whether I can do 100 push-ups or not. If I can do 100 push-ups, then the number of people betting 'yes' will be the number of letters we have in our language. If I can't do it, then the number of people betting 'no' will be the number of letters."

This seemed like a reasonable idea. The Language-Deciders all agreed. Everyone carefully cast their bets as the old woman prepared for her push-ups. When all was ready, the old woman got on the floor in the push-up position.
"One...two...three...," the Language-Deciders all chanted as the old woman bobbed up and down, "twenty....twenty-one..."
The old woman was doing remarkably well for her age and strength. Most of the assembly hadn't believed she could even get to 30.
"fifty-one...fifty-two...seventy-six...eighty..."
The old woman was about to make it, she was almost to ninety!
"ninety-one...ninety-three..."
But no! The old woman was tiring out, it didn't look like she was going to make it! Go old woman, go! Everyone began chanting, "Go lady go lady go, go lady go lady go!"
From the back a cry was heard, " Don't give up now Doris!" (This, obviously, was her husband...obviously). With a strained effort the old woman continued.
"Ninety-eight..." PLOP! THUD!
The woman crashed to the ground. She couldn't do it. Bummer.
Well, the "no's" won it. And there were 26 of them. So, there are now 26 letters in our alphabet--which came from THE ULTIMATE BET!

Pretty sure that is the story of the alphabet. I wouldn't doubt it. We live in a psycho world; it could totally happen.
Posted by Jen Christensen at 4:38 PM

2 comments:

Mary said...

Oh Jen, I've decided if Owen ever asks me why there are 26 letters in the alphabet, I'm totally gonna use this story. :)

March 26, 2010 at 9:20 AM
Jen Christensen said...

GOOD! Everybody needs a disappointing story once in a while. I was going to have it end happily, but then I realized that I wanted the story to be anti-climatic.

March 26, 2010 at 3:06 PM

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