Hoover, like a lot of houses in the housing system, has a bunch of Czars doing lots of different things. We have Birthday Czarinas. A Kitchen Czar. A Condom Czar. Lounge Czars. We are so surrounded by Czars it has reshaped how Ellie and Jonah view the world. The other day I heard Jonah correct one of his classmates. Here is the actual verbatim dialogue:
Jonah's classmate, Gus: "Twinkle, twinkle little star, how I..."
Jonah (interrupting): "No, no. It goes like this - Twinkle, twinkle little czar, how I wonder what you are."
Anyway, until I moved into Hoover, I always thought of czar as an especially tricky crossword puzzle answer. Those fiends who create crossword puzzles love the word because they can give the same clue, "A Romanov, for example," and one time the answer can be "tsar" and another time the answer can be "czar." Make the wrong guess - especially when you are doing the puzzle in pen - and it haunts you. So you wait until you fill in some other answers so you can see which spelling makes sense in the specific context of the puzzle you are working on. But that is aggravating because, gosh darn it!, you want the satisfaction of filling in the answer and moving on. Will Shortz! Why do you taunt me!
