Name Calling.

I've been called names. They probably started out okay: "Darling baby!" "Cute little boy." Can't verify either, but a song I remember as a child claimed "Every old crow thinks her baby's white as snow". Cooing baby names seem assured.

But, the names went downhill from there. "Dumb kid."

Then "Teenager." Has there ever been a word more frequently used as a synonym for stupid?

Next was "Young Adult." Meaning, "still wet behind the ears", not quite yet a real person.

This was followed by "Middle Age." That's a nice term for a "Dicky Do" (A 40-ish beer drinker whose belly sticks out farther than his dicky do.}

Then, of course, came "Senior Citizen", a lame attempt at being PC... as though it is an insult to call an old person "old". I've wondered who first came up with that name.

Now I am called an "Octogenarian".

You know what's next?

"Ancestor".

Patience and Discipline!

Received this in an email: None of it verifiable, but certainly fun to think about!

A Well-Planned Retirement

Outside England 's Bristol Zoo there is a parking lot for 150 cars and 8 buses. For 25 years, its parking fees were managed by a very pleasant attendant. The fees were 1 for cars ($1.40), 5 for buses (about $7).

Then, one day, after 25 solid years of never missing a day of work, he just didn't show up; so the Zoo Management called the City Council and asked it to send them another parking agent.

The Council did some research and replied that the parking lot was the Zoo's own responsibility. The Zoo advised the Council that the attendant was a City employee. The City Council responded that the lot attendant had never been on the City payroll.

Meanwhile, sitting in his villa somewhere on the coast of Spain or France or Italy .... is a man who'd apparently had a ticket machine installed completely on his own and then had simply begun to show up every day, commencing to collect and keep the parking fees, estimated at about $560 per day -- for 25 years.

Assuming 7 days a week, this amounts to just over $7 million dollars ...... and no one even knows his name.

I once read a book that spoke of British patience and discipline. It talked about far-flung outposts of the British Empire, observable by no one, where faithful employees none-the-less showed up for work every day, rain or shine, to fulfill their assigned duties. Patience and discipline.

The Brit at the zoo was most certainly patient and disciplined. But don't you wonder how it could have started?

I can imagine some well-intentioned 1985 zoo patron, trying to help the then-administrators of the zoo raise revenue for the welfare of the animals. He suggested they charge for parking.

They whined that it would take some equipment and someone would have to be employed as an attendant. He offered to volunteer both - and did.

When he had accumulated a sum of money for parking fees, no one would accept the money: They did not have a bank account; They would have to form a committee to elect a treasurer; They would need to employ an accountant to compute taxes or other fiscal liabilities. They had other pressing things to do - like shoveling dung out of the elephant's enclosure.

The old guy just agreed to hang onto the dough until they solved their problems. Time passed and the administration of the zoo changed. The patient, disciplined old Brit continued in his self-imposed obligations.

Then, one day, some asshole insulted him in the way people often insult those they consider "beneath" them.

The old guy said nothing, just went home - wherever that may now be!

May he live happily ever after!

Just A Word?

President Obama was widely quoted after his "just words" comments. He was saying that some comments were a great deal more than just words.

I agree - but recently I hear comments - words, that is - that have a darker meaning than immediately apparent. If a pattern of behavior acquires a name - and if that behavior becomes unpopular - don't change the behavior, just change the name used for that behavior.

Or, if you want some behavior to seem better than it is perceived to be, you might just nuance the name commonly associated with that behavior.

The current mania for "political correctness" brings many examples to mind. "Disabled" replaced "crippled". Okay by me if "crippled" was hurtful to some.

But, I am not necessarily okay with discarding a name that has become distasteful by preempting a fully tasteful word as the new name. I have never liked the idea of calling homosexual men "gay".

Homosexual women are called a name derived from a Greek island - for some historical reason, perhaps - but the women didn't go out and steal the name from some more widely accepted behavior. I am not bashing homosexual men, and I have no problem with their wanting to be called something different. But why choose a word long associated with happy children at play?

Okay, none of those example are a burr under my saddle. Two that are is the practice of calling liberals progressives. Progressive sounds like someone supporting "progress". Not everyone realizes that Progressive delineated a much more sinister ideology a century ago. The second is the practice of calling Democrat politicians Democratic. The Democrat Party is an ideology that has been hijacked. So, calling a Democrat senator, a Democratic Senator, sounds better!

I'd like to think that all senators are democratic. Which is exactly why Democrats want us to give the term democratic a capital "D"! Even some competent journalists are now doing it.

Determined to Damn The Tea Parties

The current tactic of the liberal Left is simple: If you disagree with someone or something, don't debate, destroy!

The other day, some dingbat woman running for Governor of Texas, was a guest of commentator Glenn Beck. He asked her point blank if she was a "9/11 truther". Did she believe the U.S. Government was behind the attack on September 11, 2001. She gave a worthless politician's answer... she didn't have enough evidence to answer. Translation, "I have no belief, I just don't want to offend anyone who may vote for me."

Today, a TV reporter questioned another dingbat, identified as an expert of some sort. This clown was asked if the comment by dingbat #1 will hurt her candidacy. His answer, in effect, was, "If her polling goes up, it will prove that the Tea Party movement agrees with her."

Say, what?

I translate that as: Don't know what you're talking about, but here's a chance to take a vicious swipe at the Tea Party movement. Let 'er rip!

I have participated in every Tea Party protest I could. I have met and talked at length with Tea Party followers in my city. I have yet to hear one of them express an opinion that the Bush Administration engineered the 9/11 attacks in New York. Quite the opposite. Most are absolutely convinced that 9/11 was solely the work of Islamic extremists.

So, why did the expert on TV imply that Tea Party people will hinge their support for the Texas lady dingbat on her 9/11 conspiracy stand, or lack thereof?

For Valentine's Day:
A French Love Story

When my youngest son was barely a teen, we invited a French boy to come to America and be our guest for a summer month. The next summer we repeated with a second French boy. The following summer, our son spent a month with a family in France. We enjoyed the French boys and our son loved his summer in France - although most of it was spent at their vacation home in Spain!

One of the interesting stories he later told was that the French boys revealed they had always heard American girls were hot and horny. This surprised him, because he had always heard it was the French girls who were lovely and love-starved.

There are a lot of silly misconceptions between Americans and the French. Don't most Americans think the French are a bunch of pantywaists? Aren't most Frenchmen in complete bewilderment that America is full of wholly unsophisticated rednecks? Not really. Here is one story about our true relationship.

On Christmas Eve, 1732, a boy named Edward Peregois was born somewhere in France. For reasons no longer known, he emigrated to America.

A Frenchman, in an America run by Englishmen, Edward found his surname misspelled repeatedly. Eventually the family settled on the spelling Pedigo - which, pronounced by an Englishman, sounds about like Peregois, pronounced by a Frenchman.

Edward fell in love with his new land and when there arose a movement among colonists to declare America's independence from England, Edward joined in. In fact, he became a member of America's military, willing to fight for that Independence. With a Virginia Regiment, he joined General Washington's army at Valley Forge, PA where they did, indeed, fight for America's independence.

After the war, a grateful America gave Edward Pedigo a land warrant and he became a successful Virginia farmer, and father of seven. When his wife died, he remarried and fathered another seven children! Lots of hands for that Virginia farm.

But, as the years and generations progressed, much of the family migrated west to Kentucky and beyond. Eventually, Estella Greene Pedigo, daughter of the fifth generation, gave birth to three sons in Texas. These three Texas boys all came of age in time to be called to military duty during the global conflict that would become known as the World War. (And eventually, "The First World War")

The oldest son, Prentice Bradley was first to go to France. There, in November, 1918, just before the Armistice ended it all, in a wooded place known to historians as the Argonne Forest, Prentice Bradley died fighting for the freedom of his great, great, great, great grandfather's native land.

Such is the true relationship of the Americans and the French. As Charles DeGaulle once pointed out, our nations have always been the closest of friends. We share the rare and blessed fact that French and American armies have never faced each other in battle.

And I find it poignant that my great, great, great, great, great grandfather, Edward Pedigo left France to come fight for America. And that my uncle, Prentice Bradley, left America to go fight for France.

That was a true French love story. A Frenchman and an American. Love of freedom. Love of your fellow man.