I was just thinking this morning about doing some things differently – the turning over a new leaf thing. And it popped into my head that perhaps that is one of those expressions that has prompted images to pop into heads and maybe theories about vocabulary. Actually, the first thing that popped into my head was not that thought; it was the image of a little person running out in the yard and turning over each new leaf that falls in the – uh – fall. Thousands of new them. Each one a leaf. It would get boring and turn into a long job which would only end with the ritual of turning over a new snowflake. Of course, I’m wrong: You don’t turn over a snowflake; you verify that it is not like any other snowflake you have seen.

Okay, just forget the part about snowflakes. I’m going to. I’m getting back to the leaf thing. You’re turning over each and every leaf and all of a sudden Newton’s Apple smacks you on the head and you think, “I’m going to leave.”

And that’s why the plural of leaf is leaves.

But if the leaf of which we speak in this turning process is a page in a book and the part to which a page is attached is the spine, why don’t we call it a rib? That would make a book a rack of ribs which could be a reason for bringing reading material to the table.

It could be an odd day today.