I know that words have different meanings in different cultures, but somehow I was surprised this morning to look up the term “diddle” and find out that in England the slang term is used informally to mean “to cheat or swindle (someone) so as to deprive them of something. To victimize.”

Whoa! I don’t use the word in that sense at all. I use it in the sense of American slang: “To pass time aimlessly or unproductively.”

I guess you learn something every day.

I looked up the word because it occurred to me that I might write a journal post about how I spent my afternoon yesterday, and many blocks of time lately. I had in mind the nursery rhyme attributed to Mother Goose:

Hey, diddle, diddle,
The cat and the fiddle,
The cow jumped over the moon;
The little dog laughed
To see such sport,
And the dish ran away with the spoon.

Now, i keep trying to interpret that rhyme in the English sense of the word. I don’t think that is what is going on even though, I didn’t used to trust cats at all. You see, my brother had a cat who was terribly loyal to him. She had all kinds of privileges. She was supposed to be kept out doors, but she would climb the tree outside our house and drop down onto the roof. My brother’s room was in the peak of the attic and he would open his window and the cat would jump from the roof to his window sill and he would let her into the house. He got caught when she had kittens in the crawl space at the edge of his attic room and refused to allow anyone to go in to look at them. My brother simply couldn’t hide that from our mother.

That particular cat had it in for me. One night she used my American Bricks for a litter box. I had to scrub all of the individual bricks by hand. It was a mess that I haven’t forgotten - and probably haven’t fully forgiven - to this day. Another time I was wrestling with my brother. It was summer and we both were wearing cut off jean shorts and t shirts. My t shirt was pulled up with the strain of wrestling my brother. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, that cat jumped onto my bare back with all of its sharp points bared. She drew blood at several places. In my memory she shredded my back, which i’m sure is an exaggeration, but my scratches were enough to cause our mother to scrub the wounds. She was a nurse and you really didn’t want her to scrub any part of you, especially tender skin. An application of disinfectant followed and that really did sting!

I have since learned to make peace with cats. Our children had several cats and I had genuine affection for them. They were such excellent teachers of many life skills to tour children. One big tomcat was a special favorite of mine. He liked to hang out with me. I used to watch the Red Green television show on PBS in the evening after a long day at work. I’d head to the basement where we had a television. I’d turn on the TV and plop down in a comfortable chair to watch the half hour program before getting up and getting on with my day. That cat would come running from wherever he was and jump into my lap to watch the program with me. He had a loud purr and I enjoyed him.

Still, we had another cat that our daughter says adopted her at the pound. That little cat always acted afraid around me. I was always gentle with it, but it cowered whenever I was around. I suspected that it might have been abused by an adult male. I was specially careful to always be gentle with the animal. Later in its life, it did warm up to me a little bit and would allow me to pet it if there was no one else at home. Our son, however, roughhoused with that cat. He would pick it up and toss it into the air, chase it up and down the stairs, grab it by the scruff of its neck, and twirl it around. That cat adored him. If he came home when I was petting it, it would run away from me to greet him. When he went away to college the cat sulked, and when he came home for a break, it followed him around the house constantly.

I’m trying to make things up with cats. I’ve been visiting them from time to time at a local shelter. I’m intending to adopt a pair of cats to live in the shop in the barn at our son’s farm. I’m hoping they will keep the mice at bay. Sometimes the mice come into the shop and chew up a bit of paper on which I’d sketched some plans. Sometimes they leave messes. I’m pretty careful to be sure to not have food in the shop, but that doesn’t stop the mice. I’m hoping a couple of well-fed and well-loved cats might enjoy hunting mice for sport. I haven’t adopted any yet, but may do so before long. It would raise my image with our daughter who is coming to visit this summer. She is a lover of cats and has challenged me several times to get a cat for our home. She’d be happy if I had a couple of cats over at the shop.

At any rate, I was thinking of the nursery rhyme because yesterday afternoon, I went to the farm and I didn’t really accomplish anything. I thought I was diddling, though I had no intention of cheating of swindling and there were no victims to my behavior. I went to the farm with the intention of moving a bee colony, but decided not to do that job in the middle of the day because it was warm and the colony was sending out all kinds of foragers. I feared that moving the colony might leave foragers confused if they were out when I moved it. I’ll move them late at night someday soon when most of the bees are inside the hive. That will be better for them.

So I cleaned out the back seat of the truck. I didn’t clean everything, but I did clean out the back seat. I put away some tools and some supplies we use when repairing wiring on a vehicle or trailer. I prepared a new hive to receive bees. I cleaned up a bit of garbage. I looked at some trees we planted earlier. I checked the chickens. I talked to my grandson. I prepared the area where the bees new home will be. I decided to run to town to get a propane bottle filled. I got home after 5 pm having accomplished nothing. I feel like these days I’m getting better at diddling than was the case when I had a full time job. Perhaps diddling is a retirement activity for me.

Then this morning I read the English definition of the term in the Oxford English Dictionary online edition. I’m not sure I want to learn how to diddle anymore.