eyes back in my head while promising myself that I would jump off the nearest cliff if I ever got that bad. Well, guess what? I am now 61 and should probably avoid any hikes up DeLeo Wall. These thoughts occur to me because when we had the family over for dinner the other day, something was spilled on the floor and I said that I had to go to the garage and retrieve the "swipinta." What's a "swipinta?" Well, for some reason, the words "dust" and "pan" together have just never worked for me. Rarely is it dust that you're sweeping up, and the thing never looked like a "pan" to me, so it became the "sweep-into," and then shortened and morphed into "swipinta." And if that's not bad enough, I often forget the name for the broom (it was, briefly, the "indoor rake") so the broom periodically becomes the "swipinta with." When I started writing this column, I thought these slips were pretty funny. But re-reading it, I'm feeling a little uneasy and wonder if it's time for me to make an appointment for a trip through a people silver tube radar thing. You know what I mean ... that patient tube scanner X-ray doohickey? The one that takes indoor pictures of your skull? You know: The doomaflidger. Reach Pat Detmer -- whose husband The Sainted One claims to understand every verbal aberration that she's ever come up with -- at patdetmer@aol.com. The Sainted One is our official