by Robert LaFrance
I don’t know why, but the sight of a teenager smoking still fills me with amazement. After all these decades of information that smoking causes everything from lung cancer to sybaretic hemophilia and hangnails, some youngsters still grab onto tobacco as if it were the answer to all their questions. Even though they’re sneered at, cajoled, and otherwise assaulted, teenage smokers – and smokers of all ages – continue to stick burning leaves into their mouths. Why?
It can’t be peer pressure; their peers are the ones sneering at them. (Interesting phrase—sneering peers, what?) It can’t be any particular desire to look cool – burning leaves can’t very well look cool. And it can’t be that they are making a statement, unless that statement is: “Look at me, I’m doing something dumb!”
I suppose they could be making the statement that they have a lot of disposable cash, but a non-shiny old pair of jeans with the knees ripped out would say the same thing. It is said that those items sell for $300-$500 in Russia and parts of Kosovo and if that is true, I am sitting on a gold mine. That rag box I just put into the garage is worth roughly $2,230.
School authorities and parents who are paying attention have tried for years to persuade their young gaffers not to take up the noxious and expensive weed, and have often failed miserably, but, as usual, I have a plan. However, the downside is that in order for it to work, some big bucks must be spent.
First, the parents of a school-age smoker—especially one who is just starting the habit-forming practice—must invest in some of those jeans I mentioned above. Four or five hundred dollars worth should do the trick. Then they (the once-wealthy parents) must start smoking. I will guarantee that within two weeks the young student will not only give up smoking—tobacco at least—but he or she will start wearing Brooks Brothers suits with Armani ties - perhaps even some Italian shirts.
I mentioned the word ‘downside’. By this time, the parents are not only hooked on nicotine, but they are broke, and none of their friends will speak to them. They will be living their lives in a noxious hell—a cloud of acrid, filthy, and smelly blue smoke. Their house, their cars, and their clothes will stink. Their children will now scorn them, their friends will eschew them, and their health will suffer, but hey, if you want to break an omelet, you have to take a stitch in time, if you gather my moss.
At least there’s no danger of their becoming chain smokers. In my 63.18 years on this planet, I have never seen a person smoking a chain.
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Here’s item I have dragged out of my sweaty notebook:
When we moved here to the Scotch Colony in 1984 (Flug moved next door in 1987) there were a pair of bobolinks nesting in the field just up from the house. They were there for several years and then, perhaps because of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, they disappeared. About three weeks ago, I was hoeing some beans and looked into a nearby Yellow Transparent tree to find – guess what? A pair of nesting robins.
Just kidding—it was a pair of bobolinks. I talked to a few birders in the area and they said bobolinks weren’t that uncommon, so why am I making such a fuss? I asked when was the last time they had seen a bobolink, and not one of them had seen one since 1995.
Which brings me to the real reason I brought up the subject: On Monday evening I was reading a book on word origins and found that the word ‘bobolink’ has a very interesting pedigree. It was originally called ‘Robert of Lincoln’ and went on to half a dozen other names. Now doesn’t that just make your day to find this out? Robert of Lincoln became bobolink.
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One more subject and your suffering is over for this week. Also in the matter of word origins in our interesting and ever-changing language, I looked in a mirror this morning and, for some reason, thought of the word ‘dunce’. I looked into a book I often consult—“An Irreverent and Thoroughly Incomplete Social History of Almost Everything” by Frank Muir and found the word’s origin explained.
Don’t tell my wife about this (she wears a kilt at breakfast), but the original dunce was Scottish. His name was Duns Scotus. A 13th century schoolteacher, he led a movement that was against any form of progress or innovation. His followers, called Dunsers, were always upset about newfangled ideas “so that the name indicated an opponent to progress and to learning. Hence they were dunces”.
-end-
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