A cooler for $7.50? I couldn’t resist.
If you think I’m talking about an insulated container for ice and drinks, think again.
PAUSE TO THINK AGAIN.
Long ago we iced down our drinks in ice chests – not coolers. We couldn’t call them coolers because coolers were things installed in windows to cool houses. That’s the kind of cooler I just bought – an air cooler. Except mine doesn’t fit in a window. It’s portable.
Words are like that. Definitions lay claims on them, but when a definition releases its claim, that word is up for grabs.
If I could think of a cooler example than “cooler” I’d cite it to support my illustration. I can’t.
Back to coolers.
My new one was originally $15. Marked down for the second day of the estate sale, it was irresistible.
If my new little cooler has a pump to make the water dribble onto the excelsior, it’s not visible. Capillary action must be at work.
If “excelsior” gave you pause, you’re probably not among my readers, but let’s stop for an excelsior moment anyway.
The word enjoys competing definitions. Think claim disputes. Here’s my personal list of meanings, ridiculous to sublime, not necessarily in that order:
Regarding coolers, excelsior’s the stuff that holds water so fans can pull air though it and, thanks to either an endothermic or exothermic reaction, cool the air. (I always get exo- and endo- confused.)
Isn’t it what Goofy exclaimed just as he skied off a very steep Alp? Excelsior! I think it’s almost interchangeable with “Geronimo!” unless you’re parachuting. You’d probably get kicked out of the plane if you said “Excelsior!”
If you want to spend extra money on your chickens, buy them some excelsior bedding.
Excelsior also works for chair stuffing. I can’t help but recall the moment during a Western movie at the old Pic theater when Barney Milner pulled some excelsior from one aging seat and put it on his top lip for a mustache, scrunching his face to hold it in place. He looked like Gabby Hayes without a beard. (Someone can tell Barney I mentioned him.)
And that’s not to mention the Excelsior House Hotel in Jefferson, Texas.
DICTIONARY PAUSE.
My examples jibe nicely with what my computer dictionary has to say about “excelsior.”
But when I searched the Internet to see if Goofy really said it, I came up short. Goofy seems to have yodeled instead. If he didn’t say it, he should have.
All in all, it’s an amazing cover-all-the-bases word, and, Goofy or not, I’m still sure I heard it yelled by a cartoon character when I was a kid. I remember being surprised that a word connected to chicken bedding, water coolers and ratty chairs losing their stuffing would be an appropriate exclamation for a significant mountaintop moment.
I still am.
But all things considered, maybe it’s the perfect word indeed for a $7.50 apparatus that can keep me cool and use only 50 watts of electricity to do it.