The things we did as kids

By DON ADDIS

© St. Petersburg Times, published April 1, 2001

I promised I wouldn't use her name. And she was too ill at the time for me to hit her with the obvious questions, but I puzzled for a long time over the story a friend told me recently about a dumb thing she did as a child.

The idea was for her to top my story of a dumb thing I did as a child. She succeeded.

She was assigned to write a report on flamingos. Naturally, as any sixth-grader would, she copied it word-for-word out of the encyclopedia. Trouble was, she accidentally copied the data from the previous entry in the volume. She wrote down everything there was to know about flamethrowers.

I'm sure you'd have questions, too. Such as: At what point, if ever, did it occur to her that it might seem odd for the U.S. Marines to go ashore at Iwo Jima carrying pink wading birds? How many Japanese soldiers did they flush out of caves with their plumed weaponry? Would you surrender if someone pointed a flamingo at you? And what Marine would be caught dead wearing pink?

From another perspective, how many Floridians would decorate their front lawns with plaster flamethrowers?

She did say she didn't get a good grade on the project. Maybe her teacher could tell it was copied from the encyclopedia.

Body Parts Department: Whattaya make of that big recall of artificial hips? That must not be easy. At my age, I have enough trouble recalling faces.

It's a guy thing: Looks like the seal hunting business has fallen off in Canada since Viagra apparently has supplanted powdered male seal genitalia as the aphrodisiac of choice for Chinese men. Where did China get the idea seal segments would help? Well, the seal population remains large in spite of the continued slaughter. So it seems to be working for the seals.

If they can name aircraft carriers, like the Ronald Reagan, after living ex-presidents, what kind of craft might we name after, say, Bill Clinton? Showboat? Destroyer? Ya'll? Wailer? Oily tanker? Tom-catamaran? Sternwheeler-dealer? Your suggestions are welcome.

While I was out in my dinghy the other day, I was mulling over the recent ban on grouper fishing, designed to let the grouper population regroup and make things tougher on grouper fisherfolk. Some say nobody even noticed the 30-day ban. Some say it wasn't necessary. Some say they could have just sprinkled powdered seal genitalia in the waters and let it go at that.

Another mulling: Wouldn't you think, with an ocean the size of the Pacific, there'd be room for an American submarine and a Japanese fishing boat without them both trying to occupy the same space? What are the odds? It's not like they were fighting over the same parking spot at Home Depot.

I gotta smile at those police shows on TV in which the officers are followed around by video cameras while they work. The cops, the cameraman and all of us watch while a drunk beats up his girlfriend, steals a car, brandishes a gun, throws his coke stash out the window, careens at top speed through heavy traffic to escape, crashes into someone's garage and fights the cops when he's finally collared. Through it all everybody refers to him as the "suspect," like they don't know for sure he did anything wrong.

Do you suppose those police officers behave that calmly and professionally when there's no camera on them?

And another thing: It really burns me when that sultan of slop, Jerry Springer, bleeps out foul language and blurs out the image when female guests flash their breasts. You wanna give us a creep show or not, Jerry? You can't even do an honest, straight-forward job of pandering.

And about the guests: I can't fathom the thinking of those sideshow-escapee, tank-topped troglodytes who purposefully appear on national television to lay bare every detail of their sordid personal travails and ugly sex lives -- then snarl at their hecklers, "What I do is none of your business!"

Underheard:

"The death penalty does some good. There are no homeless people on death row."

"TV execs say they're just giving us what we want, but the line between catering and pandering is a fine one."

"Hugh Rodham is the Billy Carter of the new millennium."

"Imagine those awful people saying God is dead. Why, if he heard that he'd turn over in his grave. . ."

© 2006 • All Rights Reserved • Tampa Bay Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111

Contact the Times | Privacy Policy
Standard of Accuracy | Terms, Conditions & Copyright