Explaining ‘textual intercourse’
by Robert LaFrance
My
youngest nephew Zack, just turned 12, came home from school one day when I
happened to be at his house and told his mother Zelda that he had learned a new
phrase in school that day.
“Textual
intercourse,” he said proudly.
Zelda
and Zack’s father Zeros Polanimus almost fell off their chairs, but I, proudly
displaying my classical education, said: “It just means sending text messages
or even writing to each other.”
In
other vital news from southern Victoria County, those folks who work at Lower
Kilburn Garage thought they had seen everything until the Perfessor, my old
friend who lives up the road, brought his Gremlin in to get the winter tires
put on after the recent and unexpected late October snowstorm.
“Good
day to you all!” he said to old Ben Kilburn, the proprietor and his manly
staff. “I’m all set for winter except that my tires aren’t quite up to snuff,
so to speak.” Ed Greely looked at the car and then the tires and spoke the
words “racing slicks”, which are of course almost smooth tires used in drag
racing.
“How
long will it take?” asked the Perfessor and Ed replied that half an hour should
do it, and then asked if the winter tires were in the Gremlin’s trunk because
they weren’t visible in the back seat or on the roof.
“Winter
tires?” said the Perfessor in a baffled voice. “They’re down home in my shed.”
It took Ben and Ed quite a while to explain that in order to put on the
Gremlin’s winter tires they would need them to be in the actual garage, that is
the garage where Ben and Ed work.
To
cut this story from long to quite long, I will summarize: The Perfessor drove
home and got the four winter tires that turned out to be ones from his
neighbour Stephen’s Dodge Ram and were a little large for the Gremlin. Then the
Perfessor remembered some tires out behind his house and went to get them, but
they were 14-inch tires and not the required 13-inch ones.
Six
hours later the Perfessor drove away smiling but Ben and Ed were quaking,
shaking hulks, nerves shot. “I should have charged him $300, said Ben, “but I
didn’t have the heart.”
I
forgot to mention that the Perfessor drove away in Ben’s 1999 Lumina and not
his own Gremlin which had fallen into pieces when they jacked it up on the
hoist.
**********************
Some
more comments from my pocket notebook:
Listening
to a CBC Radio program on Sunday morning, I heard that the recent legalization
of marijuana had given the town of Smith Falls, Ontario, new economic hope
because their new pot store was expecting a profit of $2 million this year and
had hired 24 workers. On the way to this information, the announcer referred to
the place as “a sleepy little town” because its population was only 8800.
Who
decides if a town should be called ‘sleepy’? If I were a resident of Smith
Falls I would bristle if someone called my community sleepy. Is it a function
of population? As someone who has visited Perth-Andover, Plaster Rock and
Aroostook – not to mention Ernfield, Saskatchewan, I can’t say that any one of
them should be called sleepy. I lived in Hamilton five years – population
320,000 at that time – and quite often I could have called it sleepy while
nearby Caledonia was a going concern.
In
other words, radio announcers, quit calling communities ‘sleepy’ until you’ve
slept there a few times.
Changing
the subject slightly, I was thinking this morning as I got out some milk for my
breakfast cereal that the manufacture of fridge magnets is a significant
industry. On our old Kenmore are approximately 47 items held on by fridge
magnets which must have cost at least a few pennies each.
Suppose
Canada has 19,000,000 households and each house or apartment has a fridge and
each fridge has 47 magnets on it, how much would that amount to in dollars and
cents?
Being
me, I couldn’t resist dragging out my calculator and figuring it out. Let me
see…47 x 2 cents x 19,000,000. That total is $17,860,000. Imagine!
Moving
on to yet another subject – I have a short attention span – it has become clear
to me over the years that I am weird, which, if you have money, is called
‘eccentric’. Not having any money, I’m weird. Not to be confused with ‘wired’
which uses the same letters.
The
best illustration of my weirdness can be found in my garage. (I won’t blame my
wife for any of this.) We have a 2-bay garage where we actually park
our vehicles when we’re both home. Hear that? We put our vehicles inside
our garage and don’t use it for a storage shed while leaving the two cars
outside in the weather. Weird.
In
a few days the Americans will be voting in their mid-term elections. Please,
please let the Democrats win control of at least the house. I really want to
find out what Donald Trump is hiding in his income tax returns.
-end-
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