Scouch Over There Close To You

I’m fixing to scouch over there close to you.

I was shocked to discover that scouch was not a word, at least not one in the dictionary. But I know all y’all know what it means. If your girlfriend or boyfriend asked you to scouch on over, you knew exactly what they were eluding to.

I remember being in church one Sunday when a fiery, young guest preacher was scheduled to deliver a sermon. Folks had been talking about it for weeks, and an overflow crowd showed up on the designated day. The church was packed before the choir even came in, but people just kept pouring inside. We knew what to do though, we just scouched up real tight on the pews so everybody had a place to sit.

There was also the time the power went off in the middle of January, and there was ice all over everything. It got bone chilling cold in the house late that night, but we knew what to do. We just all scouched up real close to each other and we were warm as toast.

So it’s just about as plain as the nose on your face that scouch means to move up real close without implying, but not denying, anything else.

Why isn’t it in the dictionary? Why verbose when you can just say scouch? I suppose the new-word people just missed it, kind of like when the officials miss a call in the ball game sometimes, even if it is an obvious violation.

And it is pretty obvious that when it comes to the word scouch, it’s a violation that it’s officially missing from the dictionary. The word is just necessary and the youth of our culture need to be taught to say it, and to use it.

The devil with the dictionary. When it’s time to scouch I’ll be fixing to do some scouching.