Purports

Purports

As in:

When last we considered word of the day, Kevin had retrieved the brass canister from the mud by the wharf and taken it to Norman, his grandfather, who looked like how you would think Ken Stabler would look, at an advanced age. And Norman had examined the small scroll inside with a magnifying glass, and found a remarkable message:

Dear friends and Marlene: I am sorry I have betrayed you. I thought for the longest time that the affection and respect you bestowed upon me meant that I couldn’t really have done what I did. And a sad truth is that if it were not for the fact that the numbers don’t lie, that I would still be lying to you and myself. I don’t know what happened to me. There’s that old parable about a frog being boiled to death without knowing it because the warm water he is in rises in temperature too slowly from the frog to notice it, even when it reaches the fatal increments. That’s what happened to me. I am a frog who fooled myself in stages, and boiled myself to death.

I will miss you all and ask only for your forgiveness and your prayer.

Sincerely, Solomon

“What does it say, grandpa?” Kevin asked.

“It says amazing things,” said Norman. “It purports to be a note from a frog, or a man who hurt himself with boiling water.”

“Ouch,” said Kevin. “What does ‘purports’ mean?”

“It means supposes. It means something or someone who asserts to be something, or someone.”

“So he wants to be a frog?” Kevin asked.

“I can’t really tell,” Norman said. “But whether he was toes or webbed feet he mostly wants to be forgiven.”