Sandra Dodd

I've had a note in my desk for years that says "Find that battleaxe
thing."

Today I found it. What "it" is is a post from 1998, on a forum that
doesn't exist, but I printed it out then, so I'm transcribing it here.

Subject: Re: Calling Sandra Dodd...
Date: Tue, Sep 29, 1998
From SandraDodd

<<Oliver is looking over my shoulder, and he needs clarity on the
difference between a battleaxe and a pike.>>

A battleaxe is a cranky old woman and a pike is a fish.

A pike is longer and has to have a pokey thing on the end (speartip).
An axehead is optional.

A battleaxe is heavier, shorter, and the pokey thing is optional.

I'm saying this without looking in a book or calling my many
knowledgeable friends. BRB. (Did you know I was gone?)

I would ask my husband but he's off buying a caster for my kick stool
(because I'm short), which brings up the question what is the
difference between a caster (or is it castor? they do make that oil...
[just joking]) and a wheel?

Okay. I called my friend Jeff [a.k.a. Duke Artan MacAilin in the SCA].
He's a word-freak and medieval combat practitioner. I read him my
definitions and he said "that's it."

I wanted to say something about knowing everything. I had a family
visit my house last weekend. It was like an unschooling factory tour.
I was showing them toys and telling stories about how if kids have
played with all kinds of things and thereby gotten scientific
principles down in a sensory and intellectual kind of way, after
they're older all that's left is the vocabulary, the terminology.

I bought a dictionary with my own money at the age of nine. I've been
accused of being a know-it-all my whole life, but what I mostly know
is words. If you know the name for an alternator, if you know the
difference between an alternator and a generator by definitions, it
will seem you know about the electrical systems of cars, and you WILL
know more than if you didn't know that.

So because I've read about the Middle Ages for fun all my life and
then hung around guys who talk about and make and use weapons, I just
know. Same way people can tell a poodle from a greyhound (terminology)
people gradually add to the details of their knowledge every day that
they live.

That's why unschooling works. That's HOW unschooling works. Because
someone cares about the difference between a pike (the word "pike")
and a battleaxe (the word and the parameters of its meaning).

Definitions. Look at the word itself, "definitions."

OKAY! If you read this post carefully you've just done more than many
college courses in philosophy do in an hour. Congratulations, you
unschooler!
(I also put this here: Battleaxe or a Pike?)