The subject of stuff came up today – buying stuff, wanting stuff, saving stuff, borrowing stuff, getting rid of stuff, your stuff, my stuff…and whenever the evocative subject of stuff comes up, I just have to chuckle. After all, how do you define stuff? When I looked up stuff in the dictionary, I got the definition “to fill or pack tightly” – when I looked up synonyms for stuff I got the words cloth, fabric, textile, material, substance, matter, bits and pieces. So, when I stuff a turkey on Thanksgiving, am I packing it tightly with textiles?  When I go shopping to pick up some stuff, am I picking up bits and pieces of substance? When I go to your house and look at your stuff, am I looking at your matter? And if I have too much stuff, do I have an overabundance of fabric?

I cannot take credit for my fascination with the word stuff. It came from the poet laureate George Carlin. George could be raunchy and irreverent, but he had a love for the English language and was a master at using it to create great comedy. So, as I get ready to put away the stuff I bought at the grocery store, I leave you with a link to his comic routine on stuff. May you have many years of good laughter remembering this routine. I will never view the word stuff in the same way again. George Carlin\’s \”Stuff\”