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Show A2 The Emery County Review, Tuesday, October 7, 2008 The News Off The Beaten Path SLICE OF LIFE D E DA Z LIGHTER SIDE Bad Words James L. Davis I am of the opinion that my mouth is possessed. I am of that opinion because sometimes I open my mouth and the words that come spewing out are of a kind that make my mother blush, my children worry my last feeble grasp on sanity has slipped away, and my wife shake her head and roll her eyes. I am not a person that normally cusses, so I have no idea where these profanities come from when they come spewing out of me. I’m grateful that I do not say the Lord’s name in vain, but that leaves an awful lot of swear words, and apparently my subconscious knows them all. The only thing I need to do is lose my temper and these swear words come flying out. Apparently my subconscious has been cataloging swear words for quite some time because when I lose my temper the words that I suddenly not only know, but know how to use in a profanity-laced complete sentence are amazing. If I have been storing up swear words in my head, I’ve been doing it for quite some time. When I was younger I used to be able to pick out a cuss word in a crowd of a hundred people, all talking at once. I wasn’t always sure what the cuss word was supposed to mean, but I sure knew it was a cuss word. It sounded a little sharper than your normal, every day word. It sounded more abrupt, like a verbal slap in the face. It sounded pretty cool to me, and I would practice saying the words from time to time while looking in the mirror. I would stand in front of the mirror and spit out my cuss words “You blankety blank” and wait to see if my tongue would actually leap out of my mouth and rush down the hall to tell my mother what I had said. My mom told me that would happen and when it didn’t I realized that I had power over my tongue. I could say anything I wanted! But, of course, my parents had taught me that swearing was not a proper thing to do and I happened to possess such a refined sense of guilt that even when swearing in front of the mirror to myself I knew that what I was doing was wrong. So even though I knew swear words, even though I liked the way they rolled off my tongue and that my tongue wouldn’t leap from my mouth when they did, I didn’t by nature, swear. Except, as I said before, when I lost my temper. So my subconscious continued to catalog new and interesting swear words. My weaving career path gave me unique opportunities to learn new swear words, if not new skills. My catalog of swear words grew by leaps and bounds when I joined the Air Force. My drill instructor alone taught me 495 new cuss words to describe my apparent inability to shave without leaving stubble on my chin. Not having even a trace of stubble on your chin is so important to drill instructors that I got into the habit of shaving off the first few layers of skin on my chin to save him the trouble of coming up with new cuss words. Once I made it through basic training and learned how to shave (which was one of the greatest lessons learned in basic training, that, and swearing), I spent the next eight years learning that if you wanted to be understood in the military, it helped to swear. It was in the military that I learned that swearing wasn’t something that just men did. Up until that time I had assumed that most women, by nature, did not swear. I learned differently. I also learned that some of the swear words women use are even worse than the swear words men use. I also learned that I had an amazing ability to blush. After the Air Force I became a steel worker for a few years and as a steel worker I learned that profanity can and often is used as a way for manly men to show affection for one another. “You’re a real blankety blank, blank, you know?” “Thanks, you too.” I had assumed that my subconscious catalog of swear words was the fuel that powered my temper, but I have come to understand that my propensity to swear when angry might in fact be a genetic defect I inherited from my father. It seems that my dad, who I never recall having heard swear (angry or not), once upon a time could put a sailor to shame. This was when he was around 6 years old, apparently. One day my dad and his friend got it into their minds that they were going to go to town with my granddad, but when they informed him of this fact he calmly told them that no, they weren’t. Upon being denied what they felt was their right, my dad climbed up on the fence post to the corral so he could be eye level with his dad and began to give my grandfather such a scathing tongue lashing that the farm animals began to cry. My grandfather, on the other hand, was apparently impressed with my dad’s vocabulary, because he couldn’t stop laughing. My grandmother was not so impressed. Upon hearing of my dad’s incredible ability with the spoken word she introduced him to her incredible ability with the open hand on the backside. Which is perhaps why I never heard my dad swear. And might explain why I still believe my mouth is possessed. Photo by Josie Luke Carlie Robinson, McKinlee Wilbanks, Ashleigh Robinson and the new addition, Jaylee Robinson in the pumpkin patch. The Great Pumpkin Patch People driving by the Jay and Julie Robinson house in Ferron have lately been slowing down as they pass in order to see the giant pumpkins growing in his backyard. If they could have looked closer, earlier in the season they would have also seen massive cucumbers, a tangle of enormous tomato plants, deformed carrots, gobs of peas and radishes, and even a few strawberries. It all started two years ago when Jay Robinson and his granddaughters dug up the flowers in front of his house to plant peas. To say Ashleigh and Carlie Robinson simply like peas would be like saying that Linus only likes his blanket. They love peas. And so this year they, along with “adopted” Robinson granddaughter McKinlee Wilbanks, decided the garden needed to expand. This, of course was fine with Jay, who had been raised with a garden. “I’ve been Chuck Shepherd Lead Story The ashram-museum in Ahmedabad devoted to India’s highly revered icon of freedom Mahatma Gandhi recently re-installed a replica of the spiritual leader’s personal toilet, in that Gandhi’s own hygiene-consciousness was such a part of his legacy. It is said that he cleaned the toilet daily and referred to it as his “temple,” but ashram officials had removed it in the 1980s as somehow inappropriate, according to a September dispatch from New Delhi in London’s Daily Telegraph. Gandhi had written that “a lavatory must be as clean as a drawing room.” Unclear on the Concept Bernard LeCorn, running for the school board in Ocala, Fla., declared himself the best-qualified school steward among the three candidates because of his “doctorate,” but the Ocala Star-Banner discovered that not only was it from The Duplex wanting one,” he revealed. “This year we made it bigger.” The crew began their work in early May, tearing out the old sand box in order to have room for their larger garden. They tilled in fertilizer and some of the sand from the sand box to loosen up the soil. The girls then sent Grandpa, Jay, and Grandma, Julie, to Price with a list for the garden. They wanted peas, cucumbers, carrots, radishes, tomatoes and pumpkins. Jay brought home the strawberries as a surprise. Jay and Carlie then worked as Carlie put it “all day” to put together a sprinkling system to water their newly expanded garden. Carlie helped Jay glue the pipe together, but as he explained, “she had too much fun with the primer,” staining his new shirt. He didn’t mind though, he just brushed it off saying, “It was my fault; I wore a new shirt.” NEWS OF THE WEIRD a well-known diploma mill (cost: $249), but that Alabama A&M, a real school where he had claimed to be a faculty member after receiving bachelor’s and master’s degrees, had never employed him and had enrolled him for only one year. (In another diploma-mill fraud indictment in August, one alleged purchaser of a doctorate was Bart Anderson, superintendent of a school district in Columbus, Ohio.) Can’t Possibly Be True -- Jose Rivera, 22, survived two tours in Iraq, but back home in California, he took a job at the high-security Atwater federal prison, where officers cannot carry even nonlethal crowd-control weapons, and Rivera was murdered 10 months later by two inmates armed with handmade shivs. “Every single inmate in there is armed to the teeth for his own protection,” complained one officer, but a Bureau of Prisons spokesman told CNN in August that “communication” with inmates is a better Since then they have watered, weeded and otherwise tended their garden and watched it grow, and grow, and grow. It produced some of the largest vegetables Jay has ever seen. Their secret? According to them, it has to be the “TLC,” or maybe their “special fertilizer,” horse manure. The garden produced more than 10 bags of peas, but the girls were possibly more excited by the pumpkins, which continued to get bigger each time they visited their garden. “They’re huge,” they often told family. “We’re going to have to get a tractor just to move them.” The Robinson crew has even bigger plans for next year. “It’s got us wanting to expand and plant more, like potatoes and even corn,” Jay reported. Fortunately the Robinsons have a large yard; otherwise they may soon have to start digging up the lawn to make room. policy than even modestly arming guards. -- When Eric Aderholt’s house in Rockwell County, Texas, burned down in June, it wasn’t because the fire department was too slow. They arrived within minutes, but none was aware that local hydrants were locked. Apparently, departments know that hydrants in rural areas have been shut off, as part of post-9/11 security, and must be turned on with a special tool, which no one brought that night. Texas law even requires shut-off hydrants to be painted black, but the firefighters still arrived without the tool, and by the time they retrieved it, Aderholt’s house was gone. -- A member of Pakistan’s parliament stood his ground in August, defending news reports from his Baluchistan province that five women had been shot and then buried alive as tribal punishment for objecting to their families’ choosing husbands for them. A defiant Israr Ullah Zehri told the Associated Press, “These are centuries-old traditions, and I will continue to defend them,” despite condemnation by Zehri’s colleagues. “Only those who indulge in immoral acts should be afraid,” Zehri said. People With Too Much Time on Their Hands -- In December 2003, Yves Julien worked a regular 11hour shift, plus overtime, all at premium pay, for the Canada Border Services Agency, and then demanded an additional $9 (Cdn) for a sandwich he had purchased when asked to put in the extra hours. The agency said he was not entitled, by contract, because the overtime was already at premium pay. In September 2008, after nearly five years of multiple reviews, hairsplitting legal decisions and lengthy appeals, Julien won his $9. (Copyright 2008 Chuck Shepherd. Distributed by Universal Press Syndicate.) By Glenn McCoy |
