And yet, everyone in Puddling Parva kept using it.
It first appeared on a Tuesday. Mrs. Gimbel, the baker, was kneading her sourdough when she stopped, flour on her nose, and said to no one in particular: “This dough needs to bobdule a little longer.” Her apprentice blinked. “Bobdule?” “Yes,” said Mrs. Gimbel, as if it were the most obvious word in the world. “You know. Bobdule. Before the second rise.” bobdule
The town librarian, a sensible woman named Edna Quirk, grew concerned. She pulled out the colossal Oxford English Dictionary (Volume B, folio edition). She searched. She found “bob” (to move up and down), “bobber” (a float on a fishing line), and “bobstay” (a rope on a ship). But bobdule was nowhere. She checked the etymology supplements. Nothing. She even called the linguistics department at the distant city university. The professor there laughed. “Bobdule isn’t a word,” he said. And yet, everyone in Puddling Parva kept using it
Old Mr. Pettle, who hadn’t spoken a voluntary sentence in eleven years, looked out his window at the rain and said, “The clouds bobdule today.” And indeed, they did seem to drift with a peculiar, gentle, side-to-side wobble, as if the sky were rocking a cradle. Gimbel, the baker, was kneading her sourdough when
They realized that bobdule wasn’t a word that had been invented. It was a word that had been waiting —for a town that needed a name for the gentle, imperfect, sideways motion of life. The pause between notes. The wobble of a spinning top before it finds its balance. The way a story doesn’t end, but simply bobdules into the next telling.
And from that day on, whenever anyone in Puddling Parva felt rushed, or sharp, or too certain, they would stop and say, “Let it bobdule a bit.”