by Dave Barry
I have here a package sent in by alert reader Roger Lyons, who purchased a Revlon Pedi-Care Toe Nail Clip device for $2.19 at a Giant Supermarket in Washington, D.C. On the package is Revlon’s Full Lifetime Guarantee, which states that if you find any defects, you should follow this procedure:
Wrap securely in a box or mailing tube ... Mail insured and POSTAGE PAID ... Notify us within six months if implement is not returned ... GUARANTEE IS NOT APPLICABLE if implement has been serviced by other than Revlon, has been abused or allowed to rust. Keep lightly oiled in a dry place to avoid rusting ...
And so on. Who would DO this? Who would ever think of saving the package so he or she would know HOW to do this? Only Martians! Face it, human consumers: They have taken over. It’s too late to do anything about it. Your best bet is to stay calm, remain indoors, maybe oil your toenail clippers. Me, I have to set up the landing lights on my lawn. Zorkon is bringing in a new group tonight.
Say Uncle
Summer vacation is almost over, so today Uncle Dave has a special back-to-school “pep talk” for you young people, starting with these heart-felt words of encouragement: HA HA HA YOU HAVE TO GO BACK TO SCHOOL AND UNCLE DAVE DOESN’T NEENER NEENER NEENER.
Seriously, young people, I have some important back-to-school advice for you, and I can boil it down to four simple words: “Study Your Mathematics.”
I say this in light of a recent alarming Associated Press story stating that three out of every four high-school students—nearly 50 percent—leave school without an adequate understanding of mathematics. Frankly, I am not surprised. “How,” I am constantly asking myself, “can we expect today’s young people to understand mathematics when so many of them can’t even point their baseball caps in the right direction?”
I am constantly seeing young people with the bills of their baseball caps pointing backward. This makes no sense, young people! If you examine your cap closely, you will note that it has a piece sticking out the front called a “bill.” The purpose of the bill is to keep sun off your face, which, unless your parents did a great many drugs in the ‘60s (Ask them about it!), is located on the FRONT of your head. Wearing your cap backward is like wearing sunglasses on the back of your head, or wearing a hearing aid in your nose. (Perhaps you young people are doing this also. Uncle Dave doesn’t want to know.)
So to summarize what we’ve learned: “FRONT of cap goes on FRONT of head.” Got it, young people? Let’s all strive to do better in the coming school year!
But also we need to think about getting these math scores up. A shocking number of you young people are unable to solve even basic math problems, such as the following:
A customer walks into a fast-food restaurant, orders two hamburgers costing $2 apiece, then hands you a $5 bill. How much change should you give him? a. $2 b. $3 c. None, because the question doesn’t say you WORK there. You could just take the money and run away.
The correct answer, of course, is that you should give the customer: d. Whatever the computerized cash register says, even if it’s $154,789.62.
You young people must learn to handle basic mathematical concepts such as this if you hope to ever become a smug and complacent older person such as myself. I was fortunate enough to receive an excellent mathematical foundation as a member of the Class of 196.5 Billion Years Ago at Pleasantville High School, where I studied math under Mr. Solin, who, in my senior year, attempted to teach us calculus (from the ancient Greek words calc, meaning “the study of,” and ulus, meaning “something that only Mr. Solin could understand”).
Mr. Solin was an excellent teacher, and although the subject matter was dry, he was able to keep the class’s attention riveted on him from the moment the bell rang until the moment, several minutes later, when a large girls’ gym class walked past the classroom windows, every single day, causing the heads of us male students to rotate 90 mathematical degrees in unison, like elves in a motorized Christmas yard display. But during those brief periods when we were facing Mr. Solin, we received a solid foundation in mathematics, learning many important mathematical concepts that we still use in our professional lives as employees of top U.S. corporations. A good example is the mathematical concept of “9,” which we use almost daily to obtain an outside line on our corporate telephones so that we can order Chinese food, place bets, call 1-900-BOSOMS, and perform all of the other vital employee functions that make our economy what it is today.
You young people deserve to have the same advantages, which is why I was so pleased to note in the Associated Press story that some university professors have received a $6 million federal grant to develop new ways to teach math to high-school students. The professors know this will be a challenge. One of them is quoted as saying: “There is a mentality in this country that mathematics is something a few nerds out there do and if you don’t understand mathematics, it’s OK—you don’t need it.”
This is a bad mentality, young people. There’s nothing “nerdy” about mathematics. Contrary to their image as a bunch of out-of-it huge-butted Far Side-professor dweebs who spend all day staring at incomprehensible symbols on a blackboard while piles of dandruff form around their ankles, today’s top mathematicians are in fact a group of exciting, dynamic, and glamorous individuals who are working to solve some of the most fascinating and challenging problems facing the human race today (“Let’s see, at $2.98 apiece, with a $6 million federal grant, we could buy ... OA! That’s 2,013,422.82
POCKET PROTECTORS!”).
So come on, young people! Get in on the action! Work hard in math this year, and remember this: If some muscle-bound Neanderthal bullies corner you in the bathroom and call you a “nerd” you just look them straight in the eye and say, “Oh YEAH? Why don’t you big jerks ... LET GO! HEY. DON’T PUT MY HEAD IN THE TOILET! HEY!” And tell them that goes double for your Uncle Dave.
PUNCTUATION ‘R’ EASY
It’s time for another edition of “Ask Mister Language Person,” the column that answers your questions about grammar, vocabulary, and those little whaddyacallem marks.
Q. What are the rules regarding capital letters?
A. Capital letters are used in three grammatical situations:
1. At the beginning of proper or formal nouns. EXAMPLES: Capitalize “Queen,”
“Tea Party,” and “Rental Tuxedo.” Do NOT capitalize “dude,” “cha-cha,” or “boogerhead.”
2. To indicate a situation of great military importance. EXAMPLE: “Get on the
TELSAT and tell STAFCON that COMWIMP wants some BBQ ASAP.”
3. To indicate that the subject of the sentence has been bitten by a badger.
EXAMPLE: “I’ll just stick my hand in here and OUCH!”
Q. Is there any difference between “happen” and “transpire”?
A. Grammatically, “happen” is a collaborating inductive that should be used in predatory conjunctions such as: “Me and Norm here would like to buy you two happening mommas a drink.” Whereas “transpire” is a suppository verb that should always be used to indicate that an event of some kind has transpired. wRONG: “Lester got one of them electric worm stunners. RIGHT: “What transpired was, Lester got one of them electric worm stunners.”
Q. Do you take questions from attorneys?
A. Yes. That will be $475.
Q. No, seriously, I’m an attorney, and I want to know which is correct: “With regards to the aforementioned” blah blah blah. Or: “With regards to the aforementioned” yak yak yak.
A. That will be $850.
Q. Please explain the expression: “This does not bode well.”
A. It means that something is not boding the way it should. It could be boding better.
Q. Did an alert reader named Linda Bevard send you an article from the December 19, 1990, Denver Post concerning a Dr. Stanley Biber, who was elected commissioner in Las Animas County, and who is identified in the article as “the world’s leading sex-change surgeon”?
A. Yes.
Q. And wha
t did Dr. Biber say when he was elected?
A. He said, quote: “We pulled it off.”
Q. Please explain the correct usage of “exact same.”
A. “Exact same” is a corpuscular phrase that should be used only when something is exactly the same as something. It is the opposite (or “antibody”) of “a whole nother.”
EXAMPLE: “This is the exact same restaurant where Alma found weevils in her
pie. They gave her a whole nother slice.”
Q. I am going to deliver the eulogy at a funeral, and I wish to know whether it is correct to say: “Before he died, Lamont was an active person.” Or: “Lamont was an active person before he died.”
A. The American Funeral Industry Council advises us that the preferred term is “bought the farm.”
Q. Where should punctuation go?
A. It depends on the content.
EXAMPLE: Hi Mr Johnson exclaimed Bob Where do you want me to put these punctuation marks Oh just stick them there at the end of the following sentence answered Mr Johnson OK said Bob
The exception to this rule is teenagers, who should place a question mark after every few words to make sure people are still listening.
EXAMPLE: “So there’s this kid at school? Named Derrick? And he’s like kind of weird? Like he has a picture of Newt Gingrich carved in his hair? So one day he had to blow his nose? like really bad? But he didn’t have a tissue? So he was like sitting next to Tracy Steakle And she had this sweater? By like Ralph Lauren? So Derrick takes the sleeve? And he like ...”
PROFESSIONAL WRITING TIP: In writing a novel or play, use “foreshadowing” to subtly hint at the outcome of the plot.
WRONG: “O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?” RIGHT: “O Romeo, Romeo! I wonder if we’re both going to stab ourselves to death at the end of this plot?”
You’ve Gotta Be Kidding
Today’s scary topic for parents is: What Your Children Do When You’re Not Home.
I have here a letter from Buffalo, New York, from working mom Judy Price, concerning her 14-year-old son, David, “who should certainly know better, because the school keeps telling me he is a genius, but I have not seen signs of this in our normal, everyday life.”
Judy states that one day when she came home from work, David met her outside and said: “Hi, Mom. Are you going in?”
(This is a bad sign, parents.)
Judy says she considered replying, “No, I thought I’d just stay here in the car all night and pull away for work in the morning.”
That actually would have been a wise idea. Instead, she went inside, where she found a large black circle burned into the middle of her kitchen counter. “DAVID,” she screamed. “WHAT WERE YOU COOKING?”
The soft, timid reply came back: “A baseball.”
“A baseball,” Judy writes. “Of course. What else could it be? How could I forget to tell my children never to cook a baseball? It’s my fault, really.”
It turns out that according to David’s best friend’s cousin—and if you can’t believe HIM, who CAN you believe?—you can hit a baseball three times as far if you really heat it up first. So David did this, and naturally he put the red-hot pan down directly onto the countertop, probably because there was no rare antique furniture available.
For the record: David claims that the heated baseball did, in fact, go farther. But this does NOT mean that you young readers should try this foolish and dangerous experiment at home. Use a friend’s home.
No, seriously, you young people should never heat a baseball without proper adult supervision, just as you should never—and I say this from personal experience—attempt to make a rumba box.
A rumba box is an obscure musical instrument that consists of a wooden box with metal strips attached to it in such a way that when you plunk them, the box resonates with a pleasant rhythmic sound. The only time I ever saw a rumba box was in 1964, when a friend of my parents named Walter Karl played one at a gathering at our house, and it sounded great. Mr. Karl explained that the metal strips were actually pieces of the spring from an old-fashioned wind-up phonograph. This gave my best friend, Lanny Watts, an idea. Lanny was always having ideas. For example, one day he got tired of walking to the end of his driveway to get the mail, so he had the idea of hanging the mailbox from a rope-and-pulley system strung up the driveway to his porch, where he hooked it up to a washing-machine motor. When the mailman came, Lanny simply plugged in the motor, and whoosh, the mailbox fell down. The amount of time Lanny spent unsuccessfully trying to get this labor-saving device to work was equivalent to approximately 5,000 trips to get the actual mail, but that is the price of convenience.
So anyway, when Lanny heard Mr. Karl explain the rumba box, he realized two things:
1. His parents had an old-fashioned wind-up phonograph they hardly ever used.
2. They both worked out of the home.
So Lanny and I decided to make our own rumba box. Our plan, as I recall it, was to take the phonograph apart, snip off a bit of the spring, then put the phonograph back together, and nobody would be the wiser. This plan worked perfectly until we removed the metal box that held the phonograph spring; this box turned out to be very hard to open.
“Why would they make it so strong?” we asked ourselves.
Finally, recalling the lessons we had learned about mechanical advantage in high-school physics class, we decided to hit the box with a sledge hammer.
Do you remember the climactic scene in the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark, when the Nazis open up the Ark of the Covenant and out surges a terrifying horde of evil fury and the Nazis’ heads melt like chocolate bunnies in a microwave? Well, that’s similar to what happened when Lanny sledge-hammered the spring box. It turns out that the reason the box is so strong is that there is a really powerful, tightly wound, extremely irritable spring in there, and when you let it out, it just goes berserk, writhing and snarling and thrashing violently all over the room, seeking to gain revenge on all the people who have cranked it over the years.
Lanny and I fled the room until the spring calmed down. When we returned, we found phonograph parts spread all over the room, mixed in with approximately 2.4 miles of spring. We realized we’d have to modify our Project Goal slightly, from making a rumba box to being in an entirely new continent when Lanny’s mom got home.
Actually, Mrs. Watts went fairly easy on us, just as Judy Price seems to have been good-humored about her son’s heating the baseball. Moms are usually pretty good that way.
But sometimes I wonder. You know how guys are always complaining that they used to have a baseball-card collection that would be worth a fortune today if they still had it, but their moms threw it out? And the guys always say, “Mom just didn’t know any better.”
Well, I wonder if the moms knew exactly what they were doing. Getting even.
Sexual Intercourse
Today’s Topic for Guys is: Communicating with Women.
If there’s one thing that women find unsatisfactory about guys—and I base this conclusion on an extensive scientific study of the pile of Cosmopolitan magazines where I get my hair cut—it is that guys do not communicate enough.
This problem has arisen in my own personal relationship with my wife, Beth. I’ll be reading the newspaper and the phone will ring; I’ll answer it, listen for 10 minutes, hang up, and resume reading. Finally Beth will say: “Who was that?” And I’ll say, “Phil Wonkerman’s mom.” Phil is an old friend we haven’t heard from in 17 years. And Beth will say, “Well?” And I’ll say, “Well what?” And Beth will say, “What did she SAY?”
And I’ll say, “She said Phil is fine,” making it clear by my tone of voice that, although I do not wish to be rude, I AM trying to read the newspaper here, and I happen to be right in the middle of an important panel of “Calvin and Hobbes.”
But Beth, ignoring this, will say, “That’s all she said?”
And she will not let up. She will continue to ask district attorney-style questions, forci
ng me to recount the conversation until she’s satisfied that she has the entire story, which is that Phil just got out of prison after serving a sentence for a murder he committed when he became a drug addict because of the guilt he felt when his wife died in a freak submarine accident while Phil was having an affair with a nun, but now he’s all straightened out and has a good job as a trapeze artist and is almost through with the surgical part of his sex change and just became happily engaged to marry a prominent member of New Kids on the Block, so in other words he is fine, which is EXACTLY what I told Beth in the first place, but is that enough? No. She wants to hear every single detail.
We have some good friends, Buzz and Libby, whom we see about twice a year. When we get together, Beth and Libby always wind up in a conversation, lasting several days, during which they discuss virtually every significant event that has occurred in their lives and the lives of those they care about, sharing their innermost feelings, analyzing and probing, inevitably coming to a deeper understanding of each other, and a strengthening of a cherished friendship. Whereas Buzz and I watch the playoffs.
This is not to say Buzz and I don’t share our feelings. Sometimes we get quite emotional.
“That’s not a FOUL??” one of us will say.
Or: “YOU’RE TELLING ME THAT’S NOT A FOUL???”
I don’t mean to suggest that all we talk about is sports. We also discuss, openly and without shame, what kind of pizza we need to order. We have a fine time together, but we don’t have heavy conversations, and sometimes, after the visit is over, I’m surprised to learn—from Beth, who learned it from Libby—that there has recently been some new wrinkle in Buzz’s life, such as that he now has an artificial leg.
