by
Robert LaFrance
Every day we are faced with a lot of
things – a plethora, as Miss Sara Williams (English teacher 1921-1966 or so)
used to say – that make no sense at all. Here’s one: You sit down to a fine
meal of Chicken a la King, baked potatoes, peas and carrots from your own
garden, and a dessert of apple pie, the apples from your own orchard. Ah, those
flavours and aromas! Then, THEY say, you are supposed to go brush your teeth,
as in ‘after every meal’. So all that delicious meal’s pleasure is replaced by
the chemical taste of Colgate or Crest.
On to the subject of the Olympics,
the summer version of which just wound up in England, I find that the Games’
definition of ‘amateur’ is, at best, bizarre. It used to be that the
participants were not allowed to earn one thin dime from their sport or accept
any prize or gift related to their sport. Now, an athlete who doesn’t earn
money from his or her sport is the exception. Just last year the American
swimmer Michael Phelps made (I almost said earned) $400 million from product
endorsements.
One of the great gimmicks for
selling new cars these days is ‘employee pricing’. This phrase carries on from
the theory that those who work for the car company are able to buy that
company’s car at a big discount. My question is: how do the employees feel
about this? I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised that some of those Ford, GM,
and Toyota assembly line workers making a mere $65 an hour would simply say:
“Take this job and shove it”, a sentiment made famous by the late country
singer Johnny Paycheck. I would resent it too.
I sometimes find job references a
bit weird. A couple of decades ago a young man asked me to give him a reference
to be used against the company where he was applying for a job. First of all,
why he would want ME, well-known iconoclast, to give him a reference was a
mystery, but I did it. I wrote: “I have found (George, Bill, Clod, whatever) a
responsible young man in all my dealings with him and would not hesitate to
recommend him for any position you have to offer.” What I was really saying was
that George, etc. was undoubtedly responsible for most of the problems in the
town he lived in – thefts, vandalism, hooliganism – and while I would not
hesitate to recommend him, it certainly wouldn’t be for any job that affected
the well-being of humans or decent dogs. Those who think about such things have
noticed that I used the word ‘would’ which is in the ‘subjunctive mood’,
meaning ‘not in a donkey’s year, my friend!’. Bottom line: he got the job and
was eventually transferred to Brisbane, Australia. Mission accomplished.
While there is some wonderful
scenery around in the summer time, human and otherwise, one thing that always
amazes me is the sight of people going on ‘vacation’ and taking their entire
house and household with them in the form of an RV. I cannot picture myself
having a 3-week vacation and having to care for and worry about a $150,000
Winnebago type affair, or a great heavy-duty pickup truck with a fifth wheel
and the 40-foot trailer behind it filled with all that I’m trying to get away
from. I would spend my whole vacation worrying about how many wheels were about
to fall off it on the way home. They do, you know. If I wanted to get away that
badly, I would jump in the car (51 mpg) and stay at motels ($70-$90/night) with
no idea where I would be the next night. I did say I was an iconoclast.
It is true that
redundancies are weird because they result in people using many more words than
necessary. I
often rail about the use of redundancies such as ‘hot water heater’ and ‘first
started’ but there’s one I thought of the other day when I talked to my younger
daughter who now lives in Calgary. She had been to Lake Louise and other places
in the area and said those little hills
were called ‘The Rocky Mountains’. “My dear,” I remonstrated, “you don’t have
to say rocky mountains; it is assumed that mountains are rocky, unless it’s an
Australian mountain made of empty beer bottles and cans. When you go west from
Calgary, you just have to say you’re going to The Mountains.”
Mount Carleton here in New Brunswick is rocky too;
you may have noticed if you fell off it. Ouch!
-end-
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