Are baby boomers the last generation to latch onto crossword puzzles? If I were in charge of education, I’d make it so that once kids learned basic reading and writing skills, they’d be obligated to take a course in word puzzles. The class would be geared toward teaching them how to recognize word and sentence construction by doing all the different type of puzzles. For example, When they’d see a four letter word that began with a t and ended with a t, they would know instinctively that more than ninety percent of the time, it would be ‘that’. They would learn the rhythm of word flow and usage. They would also appreciate being able to complete the puzzle and feel a sense of accomplishment. This makes more sense than forcing them to read a novel and try to get them to explain what the author meant. Who cares what the author meant!
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Tag: humor
Room Service
There is a time and a place for everyone. My time is between four and five o’clock in the morning. I’ve found that sometimes a good whopper of a dream can put me into an interesting situation. Take, for example, this nocturnal sleep-induced encounter I recently had:
I approach a room with a sign on the door that reads ‘Growth’. I enter in and see that there is a fellow sitting at a desk reading a book. A nameplate reads: H. Allen Smith. I say to him, “Mr. Smith, or should I call you H?” He looks up from the book and gives me a nasty sneer and says, “you can call me Henry.”
So, trying to be cute I begin again, “okay, Hank. Is this the room for growth? If so, I’d like to add a few inches to my height.”
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Changing Times
Kids growing up nowadays marvel at the thought that there was a time when a person had to use a rotary dial to make a phone call. It sounds so quaint yet archaic. This is not that much different when we baby boomers looked in amazement during the early 1960’s watching The Andy Griffith Show. Sheriff Taylor would click a receiver to get Sarah’s (the operator) attention in order to put a call through
Today’s kids cannot believe that we could only choose among five or six channels to watch on television and that the tv set needed an aerial or sometimes a wire hanger to get half decent picture reception. Or that cars didn’t come with air-conditioning and a rear defogger or an on-board computer screen that helps you navigate where you were going. Part of the fun of going on a vacation trip used to be waiting for the motor club to send a map with the route laid out highlighted by a colored magic marker. In our family, one of us- usually me- would have the responsibility to hold onto the map and tell Dad ever so often how we were doing on course. (It was usually a ruse. He knew where he was going- it was just to keep me preoccupied)
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Thank You
It is so easy to say “thank you†and it makes you look like a cultured, nice person. Except sometimes, one’s gratitude can be nauseating. Take, for example, an award presentation like the Oscars. A performer who is a first time winner flies off the handle when her name gets called. It starts with shock, then recognition of what has just happened and, finally, it morphs into panic. That’s because she never expected to win and was not prepared with a simple, yet elegant thank you speech. Instead, you get a rambling on, stream of conscious listing of anyone who ever had a part in the making of the honoree’s success. If she could only remember, she would even mention the name of the person who diapered her when she was a baby.
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Sore As Heck
There used to be a time in my life when someone would ask me,â€Are you sore?†and I would presume that they were wondering if I was upset. It was another way of saying, “are you angry with me?†Time out- why does the expression “angry with†have the same meaning as “angry atâ€? Being angry with someone should mean that you both are angry for a common cause or at each other, no?- Time in
Regardless, today when someone asks me, “Are you sore?â€, I usually reply, “do you have five minutes and I’ll be glad to share?†And then I begin. “My joints are sore- knees, ankles, wrists, shoulders….†Am I forgetting any? And for those who are still interested, there’s my arthritis, tendonitis, itchy scalp, swollen legs, frequent.. uh, we won’t go there. You get the message. I wake up every morning wondering if I should just stay in bed another half hour or drag myself out into the paying world.
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The Singing Fool
Like all other baby boomers, I grew up watching musicals at the movie theaters as well as on television. The high point was going twice to see The Music Man on a big screen and be mesmerized by Robert Preston’s performance. Like anyone else sold on the world of make-believe, I thought I could sing, too. When I was relatively young I was able to intone on-key and with a decent range.
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A Bridge Too Close
Everyone has their phobias. One of mine is traveling over a bridge, presumably even over non-troubled waters. It all started when I was a little kid in the late 1950’s. We lived on Chicago’s Far West Side a few blocks from the newly constructed Congress Highway (years later it would be renamed the Eisenhower Expressway). On Sunday family outings, Dad would take the Congress (until today I still call it this) east towards the Loop, the downtown area. The end of the highway was signified by the gigantic US Post Office built smack dab on top of it. I understand that they built it with the cutout for the normal height of semi-trailer truck traffic in mind. After you went under the building tunnel, you were immediately hit with crossing over the Chicago River. At that spot, the river was no more than fifty or so feet wide. For a kid it was terrifying going over the steel waffle-like bridge pavement rather than solid cement. I was convinced that the ground beneath us was not sturdy and that we would eventually fall into the river.
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C.V.
The first thing a college graduate does after the ceremony is look for a job unless he has rich relatives who plan on putting him in the family business. For the rest of us, this means putting together a resume- excuse me, I mean, CV. For more than thirty-five years, I always thought that the thing you typed up over and over again until you got it absolutely perfect was called a “resumeâ€. Why? I have no idea. The word association never made sense. If it wasn’t pronounce like a foreign word, it then sounded as if something was being continued. Resuming what? Oh, I know- going from door to door and being told to get lost because the job was either already filled or they were testing the market place to see if there were any quality unemployed people out there worthy of future consideration. Or maybe they just didn’t like your face and decided you weren’t qualified. So, you kept on resuming the task of looking and looking. Ergo, the piece of paper that attested to your life’s body of work was an instrument of continuing- “resumingâ€- going around in circles, or a resume. Sounds good to me.
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In a Class by Myself
By Larry Teren
You’ve heard the expression, “boy, this guy’s in a class by himself!” In my case, it was almost true but not because I had a swelled head. It had to do with taking a course at Northeastern Illinois University on a campus of a couple thousand students where only three other dedicated underclassmen had the same crazy obscure interest.
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Hear, Hear!
In high school while taking a music appreciation class the teacher told us that the acuity of our hearing would peak in the not too distant future and that it would all be downhill from then on. A teenager doesn’t believe anything an adult tells him so I shrugged it off.
In the late 1970’s and early 1980’s I used to go to social outings where very loud music was played while people jerked their bodies around on a dance floor. At the time, the music was much too loud and I knew it was damaging my hearing but I thought it was wise to hang out and catch some action, if you know what I mean.
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