GPS is now king (April 12)

A few idle thoughts from an old feller

                        by Robert LaFrance

            I speak to many old people in the course of a week’s work, and most of them bitterly resent being called old people. I am 68, hoping to be 69 on May 11, and I am more bitter about another phrase that’s used to describe us oldsters: aging demographic. Whenever people talking about the fact that the average New Brunswicker’s age is rising (we hope) all the time, somehow they slip in the phrase aging demographic. How about saying this: “The codger factor is expanding”?

            Somebody was saying last week that the reason so many countries are producing big deficits all the time is that we’re all ‘profligate’. That’s what he said, profligate, which I thought was something like having warts in a certain area. He meant, of course, that every one of us wastes a whole pile of money and if we didn’t do that, all would be better. Wrong. If we all quit wasting money tomorrow, the economy would take a nose dive similar to what the Toronto Maple Leafs are about to take. Some people go out and buy a new car every three years even though theirs is perfectly all right. Without that car sale and millions like it, the auto industry could be carried on in somebody’s basement.

            I have been toying with the ideas of changing my column style (the editor cringes at this) from the current scattergun method to perhaps a cooking one, or maybe a column on etiquette, or perhaps a ‘Dear Abby’ advice column. Imagine that. I am leaning toward the ‘advice to the lovelorn’ type. People would write in with their problems and I would give them advice. For example, ‘Marissa’ would write to me and say that her husband ‘Bill’ doesn’t take her seriously when she tells him he has bad breath. I would say that she should set a delicate houseplant in front of him at supper time, and when it immediately wilts, she could point out that the plant is especially fearful of halitosis. I’m still working on the idea that needs work to be sure.

            My recent column about feeling sorry for the Americans has drawn quite a ‘HUGE’ response, as Donald Trump would say. Most (all) of the letters came from the other side of the international border. One example was from an Enid Claymore from Millinocket, Maine. Enid wrote that I should be jailed as a communist. Others called me a Red, a Commie and other variations on the word ‘Communist’. It reminded me of a guy I worked with at North Vancouver Postal Station #3 back in 1973. An American, he would call anyone who didn’t agree with him a Communist. One day I asked him to define the word; he pointed at me and: “You!”

            Here’s a phrase I had never heard before last Saturday, after the cook at the Club had served a large pot of baked beans. As we later sat around the TV, there was a rather large noise that came from a sheepish-looking Willard Keokuk. The Perfessor turned to me and said: “You know, Will might not be a great mechanic, but he is enthusiastically flatulent”. I should mention right now that the Perfessor’s real name is Joseph Fine. It  raised quite a laugh at one of the club’s recent meetings when our treasurer, Bruce Billtey, pronounced it Josephine.

            How many people do we know who still use a roadmap? I think about six, because the GPS has pretty much taken over. There’s one major problem though; you have to update the GPS once a year or so – perhaps when one washes his feet – or you could find yourself out in the woods behind a stump or floating down the Tobique behind a loosely held raft of evergreen trees that have wrenched loose from the bank.

            St. Patrick’s Day last month brought out the usual great response from those with as much as a spittoon half full of Irish ancestry. As one who, in spite of my surname, had four great great-grandfathers born in Ireland, I like to take part in the celebrations, sometimes too much. Naturally we sang ‘Danny Boy’ but there was a slight problem with pronunciation of the song’s other name ‘Londonderry Air’. Again it was Bruce Billtey, who, reading from an agenda, said: “Let’s sing London Derriere!”

            It reminds me of the time that Brenda Dugwood, chairing a meeting of the Kincardine Literary Society, decided to comment on a comment by Bruce, who had referred to a sentence in one of the books being reviewed. He said it contained ‘an ox and a moron’, and Brenda made it worse by saying: “Surely you mean ox, you moron.” We all knew that polite Brenda really didn’t mean to say that.
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