Latvian Vocabulary: Bizdings

Being stalked online.

Bizdings is not a plural word. In Latvian plural suffixes are often the letter “i.” Zirgs, is a horse. Zirgi are two or more horses. But some plural words do end with an “s.” Māja is the word for house. Two houses are mājas. “Let’s go home is, “iesim mājās.” A diacritical mark is necessary on each letter “A” to indicate “to home.”

Bizdings galvā

Galva is the Latvian word for head.

Galvā, with the diacritical mark, means in the head. Or on the head.

Bizdings is exactly what it sounds like and is pronounced pretty much the same in English as in Latvian.

Something buzzy.

Something going ding-a-ling, on and on.

Bizdings galvā something buzzing and dinging in the head. In other words, a ding-a-ling. Nutty. A bit cracked.

Anyway…

I thought of the phrase bizdings galvā today because I was being stalked on a social media platform by a woman who had a headful of buzzy-ding-a-lings. She wanted to talk. She wanted to make friends. Even though I might chat with someone on the elevator or in the checkout line at the grocery store, I have little interest in talking to strangers. So we didn’t talk.

Ms. Bizdings and I had been friends for quite a while. I don’t remember for how long. She never posts anything that I’ve seen. She never comments on my posts. She wanted to talk one other time, a year, maybe two years ago. Or longer, for all I know. That’s how much she cared about being friends. Today she must have been off her meds.

Today the Bizdings woman didn’t give up so easily. When I asked what she wanted to talk about, she said she wanted to talk about “life.” I told her I’m not good at talking to strangers, that she should get to know me first by chatting on messenger. That wasn’t good enough for her. She called twice. I declined both calls. I told her she was being pushy. I had to translate the word, “uzbāzīga.” She agreed but kept persisting.

We’ve talked before, she claimed. Don’t you remember? No, because we’ve never talked. Oh, yes we have, she insisted. We talked about your novel. It’s about a pilot. Yes, there is a pilot in A Home for an Exile’s Heart, but my novel is not about him. He’s the love interest of my protagonist, a widowed Latvian refugee. That information is available on Twitter and in several Latvian Facebook groups. What must have seemed like the clincher, to prove we’d talked, she said she’d told me about the Latvian tradition of giving bouquets consisting of an odd number of flowers. Bouquets with even numbers of blossoms are only for funerals. Why she thought that was relevant to anything, I don’t know.

I didn’t count the flowers.

After admitting that she’s pushy, she gave me the thumbs up. I gave her the thumbs down. She thought that was rude. I unfriended her. Thank goodness she lives on the other side of the world.

This is what happens when we put ourselves out there on social media. I want people to read my book so I’m going to keep putting myself out there in hopes of attracting an audience.

I didn’t make a friend, but I got a blog post out of it. That’s something.