Round and Round

Posted on October 25, 2010
by Karen Fayeth
3 Comments

The past couple weeks I’ve participated in the Theme Thursday challenge. A fresh topic is presented each Thursday and over the next week, bloggers interpret the theme.

Cool, right? I sure think so.

The first couple weeks were pretty easy. The words were game and knot and I happily interpreted them in my own way.

This week, the theme word is wheel.

It’s one of those deceptive words. It seems so easy. Simple. Complete. Because it’s so simple and ubiquitous, it actually becomes hard to narrow down a single interpretation of the word wheel and go with that.

So I won’t.

Here’s a real time brainstorming session. All the ways wheel speaks to me:

Ferris wheel. Uncle Cliff’s in Albuquerque. I’m kid, waiting in line. That incredible view of the lights of the city when I’m up there at the top and it pauses a moment just to let you sit. Yeah. The smell of cotton candy and corn dogs wafting up. That’s summer.

The Wheel of Fortune Tarot card. Round and round.

The Wheel of Fortune television show. Vanna, pick me a letter.

The wheels on a car. Man are tires expensive. Yesterday it rained like it meant it here in the Bay Area. The first big rain of the season. We drove up to San Francisco, and it became very clear that The Good Man’s car needs tires soon.

The steering wheel. Remembering gripping that big wheel when I learned to drive in my dad’s 1972 Chevy Blazer. Blue. Four wheel drive. I loved that truck.

“Wheel in the sky keeps on turning…” Who did that song? Gonna have to Google it. Oh yeah. Journey. Weirdly, Steve Perry has been in the ballpark during the San Francisco Giants baseball playoffs. The park has been playing “Don’t Stop Believing” and Perry has been leading the singalong. Hell, if Steve Perry is the Lucky Stuff that got us to the World Series, I’ll take it.

Wheels, as used in baseball. Referring to the feet, especially of a fast runner. “Man, that Andres Torres has some wheels! Did you see how fast he got to first base?”

If you say the word wheel to yourself long enough, it starts to sound weird. Wheeeel. Wheeeeeeeeel. Have you seen that Geico commercial with the little piggy going wheee wheee wheee all the way home?

Asleep At The Wheel, what a great band. Saw ’em play live at the Pan Am Center in Las Cruces. Danced my booty off. Fun!

Business lingo: “Let’s not reinvent the wheel.” Though lately that’s been replaced by the equally lame phrase, “Let’s not try to boil the ocean.” Argh! Take your low hanging, wheel inventing, consensus building, suit wearing phrases and stick them in your…. *curse words redacted* for the sake of my mom, who reads my blog.

Ok, I think that’s enough. There’s more where that came from, but ten interpretations of the word wheel is plenty.

And there you have it.