The Origins of the Pejoratives

September 29, 2023July 27, 2024 RilalyLeave a comment

“You, my friend, are what they call a joker,” I told Shelley Macintosh. “A real joker.”

“A joker?” Shelley asked. “What’s a joker? Did you mean a jokester? Do you mean joker, as in the playing card, or the bad guy from Batman?”

“A joker,” I said, measuring her reaction to see if she was playing with me. “A joker. A person who jokes around a lot. I don’t know. Everyone says it. It’s a common phrase everyone uses it to describe a person who jokes around a lot. Are you messing with me? You’ve never heard of the term joker before?”

After some back and forth, we established the fact that Shelley never heard the word used in that context before. As incomprehensible as I considered it that a woman who was roughly my age, who grew up in the area I did with all the same colloquialisms, and watched the same shows growing up, never heard the word, I then wondered where I did.

Etymologists trace the historical origins of words, but their professional focus remains on more formal and serious words. There is some less serious research into the history of vulgar vocabulary, but a term that is nestled somewhere in between, like joker, doesn’t receive much focus from either party. Joker might not be a great example of a pejorative, as it doesn’t really belittle anyone, put anyone in their place, offend anyone, or hurt their feelings, but put in a certain context, “You’re a real joker, aren’t you?” it could be confrontational. Those words could be fighting words, but we’d have to frame them up with the right face to get that done.

We know that the Ancient Egyptians had court jesters, that could be called jokers, to entertain their pharaohs dating back to the Fifth Dynasty, and the Romans employed them to provide comic relief for their leaders, but how did the term joker weave its way through the timeline to my mouth in the 20th Century?

How does a word, any word, travel through time? Some are fascinated by this, as evidenced by those who choose professions in various professional language specialist arenas, but to those of us who choose more common professions it’s so boring we don’t want to devote any of the precious time we have left on Earth to it. In principle, it’s interesting to wonder how a word might travel from Ancient Greece to modern English, but the research is not as fascinating as readers might think. I’ve had friends drop words and phrases I found fascinating. “Where did you hear that word?” I wondered aloud thinking that that word was exclusive to the first person I heard use it. I did my research, and I found it personally fascinating to learn that some of these words and phrases predate me by hundreds to thousands of years. Fascinating, right? Wrong, people don’t go so far as to yawn in my face, say “who cares?” or drop a playful characterization of my bookishness on me, but they don’t find the history of words nearly as fascinating as I do.

In my research, I found that a large number of the words and phrases we use every day derive most often from various stages of Latin, English, Ancient Greece, The Bible, and Shakespeare. Look up your favorite word, and you’ll find that most of the words and phrases you use every day are derived from one of those sources, and the reason we stress derived is that as these words travel through time they modify slightly in meaning, totally transform, and on some very rare occasions remain somewhat in tact, in spelling and meaning, for thousands of years.

Most don’t call their peers out on their word choices in the manner Shelley did, because why would we? Unless it involves a swear word, or some unique way of expressing emotions, it’s just not that interesting to us. We also don’t call each other out on the origin of the more common words and phrases we use, because we operate on a certain, unspoken and conditional quid pro quo. “I’ll tell you what, I won’t call you out on these words and phrases you use,” we say without saying, “if you don’t call me out, because I don’t know anything about their origin either.”

One important note, before we continue, is as Etymology.com points out, “etymologies are not definitions; they’re explanations of what words mean, what they they sounded 600 or 2,000 years ago, and how they’ve traveled through time. Etymology is a science that studies the history of a word. It is a subfield of linguistics, philology, and semiotics. Etymology also studies the word’s progressions from one language to another, how it changes from one language to another, its changes in form and meaning, and some semblance of its origins.” The best and most succinct definition of etymology is that it’s the history of a word.

If this entire article is nothing more than retread for you, and you’re not only familiar but intimately knowledgeable about the general idea of etymologies, and if you have an unusual love of language and all of the manipulative power of a clever lexicon, my bet is someone, somewhere has already called you a nerd, a nincompoop, or a total nimrod.

Nimrod: A slightly dim-witted individual, a dolt.

Etymology: There are more professional, professorial, and well-researched theories on the etymological origin of nimrod out there, and their tracings are all over the place, but we prefer the more childish, amateurish word-of-mouth theories that appeal to those who prefer Buggs Bunny to long-since deceased authors monkeying around with a term. The idea that one of our favorite Saturday morning cartoons had some influence on the language we share is just far more entertaining.

The etymology of nimrod begins with The Great Nimrod (a name that can, apparently, only be mentioned with computer-enhanced reverb and some form of trumpet accompaniment). The Nimrod of Biblical lore was either the great-grandson of Noah (a man who built an ark), son of Cush, or Ham (depending on the source?), and the King of Shinar. Nimrod is also reputed to be the leader of the people who built the Tower of Babel in Shinar.

Nimrod was considered “the first on earth to be a mighty man”. He was also considered one of the great hunters of his day and “a mighty hunter before the Lord”. Nimrod was such a mighty character in the book of Genesis 10:8–12 that there are some references that declare subjects of the kingdom of Assyria called it, “The Land of Nimrod” 1 Chronicles 1:10.

Having said all that, we could assume that most considered Nimrod, the man, the myth, the legend beyond reproach, but anyone who knows anything about Looney Tunes knows that only made him prime for a satirical representation. For them, the rich tradition and folklore surrounding Nimrod made him the perfect analogy for their fumbling, stumbling hunter, Elmer Fudd.

In a 1948 episode called What Makes Daffy Duck, the brilliant and underrated comedic actor Daffy Duck refers to Elmer Fudd as “my little Nimrod”. To show how much the writers loved the characterization, they did it again, in a 1951 episode entitled Rabbit Every Monday in which they had Buggs Bunny refer to Yosemite Sam as “The Little Nimrod”.

A young child, who knows nothing of the King of Shinar, or the first mighty man of Earth, might hear this term and decide to use it against her brother, the next time he he does something foolish. Her erudite parents might overhear this and ask her if she realizes she’s calling her brother a mighty man. To clarify, they might tell the tale of the great Nimrod, and she might pause while soaking all this in. My guess is the next time her brother messes up, however, nimrod will be the first word out of her mouth, because there’s something uniquely satisfying about the sound of the word, and its unique power might derive from its uniqueness. Not many people place nimrod in their regular pejorative rotation, but when they do use it, it just feels deliciously degrading.

Chances are the daughter didn’t know where she heard the term nimrod, but everyone from my era knows that not only did we watch Looney Tunes a lot, but our local programmers ran the cartoon so often, showing so many reruns, that we could almost recite each short in real time, and we all know the conscious and subconscious power of repetition.

The brilliance of these particular Looney Tunes’ shorts lies in the idea anytime a duck or a rabbit are confronted by a human, or a hunter, they should experience fear and intimidation. As animals at the the bottom of the food chain, they know that their lives are always on the line. The humor lies in their mockery of that principle, in general, and Elmer Fudd in particular, for his stature as a mighty hunter before the Lord. Thus, the writers of Looney Tunes almost single-handedly, redefined the term nimrod for an era and beyond as someone who has an unusual belief in oneself in principle, only to show he is actually so bad at it that we question his mental acuity.

So, the next time someone attempts to belittle you with the pejorative nimrod, ask them if they’re referring to “The mighty hunter before the Lord,”, the King of Shinar, or Elmer Fudd. As much as we all loved Elmer Fudd growing up, regardless his foibles, we might not be insulted either way.

Dunce: A slow-witted or stupid person. A pejorative term that refers to one’s inability to learn. Generations ago, a student who failed to learn, or exhibited a lack of discipline was often forced to sit in a decidedly prominent corner of the room, wearing a dunce cap, or cone. Dunce was, at one time, one of the worst pejoratives one could call another.

Etymology: Once seen as one of the most brilliant philosophical theologians of his day, John Duns Scotus’ philosophies, and teachings, garnered such a substantial following that his followers called themselves Dunsmen, or Dunsers, after the theologian’s middle name. Unfortunate for the Subtle Doctor and his followers, the Renaissance happened. The Renaissance was a cultural movement that sought to render all of the ideas and achievements of classical antiquity obsolete. The Renaissance involved so many changes in so many fields that it evolved into a cultural movement that eventually rendered Scotus’ teachings obsolete by “modern” standards. Those who ascribed to the new theories of the Renaissance developed such loyalty to the “modern” ways of thinking that they derided anyone who refused to modernize. As one of the most prominent adherents to classical modes of thought, John Duns Scotus and his followers, were singled out for ridicule. As such, proponents of the Renaissance called anyone who refused to modernize to the cultural changes happening around them, Dunsers. As anyone who knows about the history of words and pejoratives knows, some words are either purposely or accidentally mispronounced or altered over time for a variety of reasons, and Dunsers became dunces.

Nincompoop: A nincompoop is foolish, an idiot, a bonehead, or a dope. This word is decidedly out-dated, old-fashioned, and rarely used anymore. If you’ve ever had someone call you a nincompoop, chances are that person has been eligible for Social Security for at least ten years. It’s not a compliment, but in the pantheon of pejoratives, it is not a wounding insult either. If you ever decide to use the pejorative on someone, the backlash might prove greater than the intended insult. Some suggest that the more common pejorative ninny derived from nincompoop, because people felt weird saying the complete word nincompoop. Although ninny wields far more power than nincompoop, it should be used judiciously, as the backlash could be just as severe. Although most of us have never heard of these two pejoratives, and even fewer have experimented with them in a pejorative sense, we caution people who might use such terms in the hopes of achieving some sort of retro-feel, because neither of them sound right, and there’s just no way that nincompoop can achieve the desired effect.

Etymology: Some suggest this word is derived from the Latin legal phrase non compos mentis “insane, mentally incompetent” (circa 1600). Others deny this, because the Latin phrase lacks the second “N”. They say that nincompoop was probably derived from Nicodemus, which was used in French for “a fool”. Still others, suggest that it was probably just an invented word at some point.

That’s it, the latter. There’s no solid evidence on the etymology of this one, and the only time I remember hearing nincompoop delivered as an insult is when my great-aunt dropped it on me after I did something stupid. She said it with obvious exclamation points all over her voice, and she made the meanest face she could think of, but all she got out of me was laughter. I don’t know if hearing the last syllable coupled with the mean face drained it of all effectiveness, but it obviously achieved the opposite affect.

Dolt: 16th century, Old English. Derived from dull, or dol. Middle English word dullen, meaning “to dull, make or become dazed or stupid.”

The progression to modernity has led dolt to mean a person who lacks common sense or the intelligence necessary to make good decisions in life. A dolt is different than a fool, however, as The Content Authority points out, as a fool is often educated and/or wise enough to make quality decisions but continues to do otherwise.

Bedlam: A scene or state of wild uproar and confusion. An outbreak of crazed insanity, that is not a riot. “We went to the concert the other night. A couple fights broke out on the floor, and it evolved into absolute bedlam before the authorities to regain control.” The housing unit of the pejoratives of yesteryear.

Etymology: Bedlam is a colloquial pronunciation of Bethlehem. Bethlehem, as in the name of the Hospital of Saint Mary of Bethlehem. The hospital began as a priory, in 1247, changed to a hospital by 1402, and ultimately became a civic lunatic asylum by 1547, where it housed the insane. Most of the inmates, as they were called, were starved, shackled, and exhibited to the public in wild and frenzied states. Thus, bedlam became synonymous with frenzied, psychotic behavior.

The proper name might be caught in transition in the title of John Davies’ 1617 publication of humorous poetry, “Wits bedlam —where is had, whipping-cheer, to cure the mad.”

The pejoratives on this list all have interesting, unusual, and noteworthy twists and turns throughout their history. Other pejoratives such as idiot, moron, imbecile and others are noteworthy not for their changes or meaning, but for their consistency through time. Some of these pejoratives existed in the B.C. (Before Christ) era. Think about that for just a second, before you yawn with fatigue, that pejorative you just called your sister was similar, if not the exact same word, a boy called his sister thousands of years ago in Ancient Greece. To my mind, the twists and turns and evolutions of words, through time, are just as interesting as the consistency of the pejoratives through thousands of years.

Nerd is the Word

September 28, 2023November 8, 2024 RilalyLeave a comment

“You are a Nerd!” used to be one of the most damaging things you could say to another. They weren’t fighting words. They were more of a “You’re not one of us” charge that required a “What do you mean, I play sports, and I like girls” defense. If we left it out there, the charge stuck, and we didn’t want something like that sticking to us. The word nerd has experienced quite an evolution in its relatively short shelf life, to the point that we now profess our own nerdy, intellectual interest in the STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and math.) The word hasn’t quite made it to a-good-thing status, as we often use it in a self-deprecating fashion, but it’s no longer one of the worst things you can call another.

If we look up the history of most words, or their etymologies, we’ll find that most of them derive from Latin, Ancient Greece, Old, Middle and Late English, The Bible, or Shakespeare. Though there is some dispute over its point of origin, the word nerd is American made.

Some suggest nerd first appeared in Dr. Seuss’s 1950 book, If I Ran the Zoo:

And then, just to show them, I’ll sail to Ka-troo
And bring back an It-kutch, a Preep and a Proo,
A Nerkle, a Nerd, and a Seersucker, too!

Others argue that any time a word, or phrase appears in an artistic venue, it was probably in circulation long before it made that appearance, as most artists, Shakespeare included, probably heard the words they used long before they brought them to the masses. After Dr. Seuss brought the word to the masses, it apparently made the rounds, as Newsweek wrote an article that stated that in 1951 Detroit, “Someone who once would be called a drip or a square is now, regrettably, a nerd.” By the 60s the word took off, as it began popping up all over the place in print.

Those who state that Dr. Seuss didn’t invent the word argue, “Dr. Seuss’s Nerd appears as more of a disapproving grouch than a drip or a square.” The etymologists took that note and began digging further. They found that one of Edgar Bergen’s ventriloquist dummies was named Mortimer Snerd. Modeled on a country bumpkin, “Snerd reminded listeners of a drip, someone who is tiresome or dull, and therefore—according to 1951 Newsweek—a nerd.”

I don’t have a personal theory regarding the etymology of nerd, but I can tell you how it penetrated the zeitgeist of my generation, and made its way into my neighborhood. Those in my demographic know where I’m headed, for they know that even if the term wasn’t born on the 70s-80s sitcom Happy Days, it was raised there. The etymology suggests that nerd might predate Happy Days by twenty years, which makes sense since the era Happy Days strove to duplicate was the 1950s.

Those of us who have attempted to pinpoint a word, or phrase, in our personal lives, know what a difficult job etymologists have. When we hear a new word, making the rounds in our inner circle, we ask our friends, “Where did you hear that?”

No one I know says, “My friend Billy says that all the time, and I thought I’d try it out.” Everyone strives to be considered the originator, or original in a more general sense. What do they say? They say, “I’ve been saying that for decades,” or, “Dude, I’ve been saying that for years.” They do not plant a flag in the term or phrase, but there is an implicit challenge to find someone who has been saying it longer than they have. Are they being dishonest? I don’t think so. I think it speaks to the nature of words and phrases, and how we absorb them into our vernacular without conscious thought. When we hear someone use terms, phrases, or sayings once, we might take notice. “Why did you say that?” we might ask. Most of us don’t ask that, because we fear the “If you have to ask…” response. By the time we hear it a fourth or fifth time, often from a wide variety of different sources, we just start saying it. Few can remember the first time they heard them, and even fewer remember the original source, so when it comes to idioms like nerd, etymologists can only source the first time it appeared in print or on the public airwaves.

Knurds on College Campuses

Most people aren’t interested in the history of words. If you’re at a party seeking party time conversation topics, the etymology of words might get you a lifted eyebrow, and that’s if you do it right. If you deliver what I’m about to tell you with pitch-perfect cadence, and you hit the final point without sounding too nerdy or professorial, you might get nothing more than a half-interested “Huh, I’ve never heard that before,” or some other polite response before moving onto something that interests them more. I did it last weekend. I told them about what I considered one of the most fascinating theories on the origin of nerd I’ve ever heard. I didn’t stopwatch the moment, or mentally document it in anyway, but I think I might’ve received a five-second reaction before someone changed the subject. “That’s it? That’s all I get?” That’s all I got, and I’m sure that one of them probably called me a nerd later for being so interested in something so inconsequential and nerdy. Some are interested of course, some study it so often that they’ve tried to find a way to make some money at it, and some do it so often that it’s grown into some sort of obsession. For the rest of us, it’s a casual, passing interests that serves as a momentary bridge between other topics.

If you’re one of the above, chances are you’ve found numerous academic, professorial breakdowns of the history of a word. Some of these breakdowns are so precise and exact that it’s both an illustration of how much hard work some pour into researching the information and how boring that research must be.

I’ve read through some etymologies, a number of them, and I’ve found them a useful cure for a mean case of insomnia. I understand that they are a ‘just the facts man’ information resource and hiring Jay Leno or Jerry Seinfeld to write for them might confuse their visitors more than anything else. I also understand that the etymologies of words are not fodder for creative writing, but if I were to put such a project together, my mission in life would be to try to breathe some life into their world to try to make them a little entertaining.

Impossible, you say? I introduce you to knurd, or as we know it nerd. Yes, nerd is the word, but one particular outlet posited a theory on the origin of the word that feeds into my notion that just because we’re involved in a scientific study of word doesn’t mean it has to be nerdy.

Nerd is the word we know and love today, and this theory states that the word began on college campuses with college students engaged in the time-honored pursuit of most college students of finding the best way to insult one another.

Quick, other than insulting one another, what’s the most popular activity on college campuses for those who try their hardest to avoid activities that add to the population, or subtract from it? If you were on the Family Feud, your first guess, and the number one answer would be … survey says, “Drinking alcohol.” College students drinking alcohol can, of course, subtract from and add to the population, but those results are rarely the goal. The goal, now that they’re on their own for the first time in their lives, is to try to find the best way possible to disappoint their parents. Drinking massive amounts of alcohol could also be said to be one of the top two ways to do something college students have wanted to do since they were five, run away from home, and they/we think the best way to do that is by destroying the brain cells that remember their childhood.

We’re all now coached to think that drinking alcohol leads to awful things, and it can, but it’s also fun, and it can lower the restraints of our inhibitions. (*Pot might accomplish similar elements, but I wasn’t part of that world.) Alcohol also provides a reason for college students to get together, i.e. parties, and the more they drink, the more fun they have, so they drink to excess. They get drunk, they love every minute of it, and they don’t want to feel guilty about it. The Poindexters of the world, talking about being responsible and reminding them that they’re wasting their college years by drinking so much alcohol that they may not be able to remember much of what they were supposed to learn that week, are the enemy. They’re responsible young men, and the only thing college students hate more than their parents, or the other authority figures in their lives, are responsible young men.

Responsible students see college as an institution that might be able to provide them the opportunity for a better future, and they fear that drinking too much alcohol might affect their academic performance. This drives drinkers crazy, because their goals are the exact opposite of those who go to college to learn stuff to prepare for the life beyond.

Most drinkers won’t say, “Who gives a crap about the future. I live for the now.” Most people, regardless of age, aren’t that bold, but they loathe responsible students who remind them of their failings in this regard.

This theory suggests that the drunks on college campuses loathed responsible young men so much that they developed a pejorative to describe those who wanted to refrain from drinking alcohol. They called them knurds. Knurd, as you’ll note, is drunk spelled backwards. Knurd is spelled different than the current incarnation of the word, but all idioms, pejorative names, and terms that penetrate the zeitgeist go through a life cycle in which their meanings progress and change (Think bad, gross, and sick), and some of the times the spelling of these words change. There is no evidence to prove, or disprove, the knurd theory, but it makes so much sense that it appeals, in so many ways, to those of us who enjoyed getting drunk in college and unwittingly carried on the tradition of calling those who didn’t a knurd.

We all know a nerd. Some of us knew so many nerds, and we liked them so much that we’ve just realized that there’s probably a reason we preferred being in their company so much. We were never a knurd, but we were nerds, are nerds, and forever will be, but within the ever-elastic definition is the prototype. We might not have known the history of the pejorative, but we don’t need to read through an etymological history to know a nerd when we see one. When we hear the word now, we picture the prototype: Oily hair, parted down the middle; a short-sleeved shirt, well pressed, with a pocket protector in the pocket of the shirt, loaded with pens, pencils; horn-rimmed glasses (I wore a pair in grades 1-5, thanks Mom!), a pre-pubescent squeak to his voice (and it’s almost always a male), and an overall uncomfortableness that leads them to avoid eye-contact. We all knew someone who fit the parameters, but did we create these extreme parameters to create a little distance for ourselves?

For all the nerds who went through its first unkind forty plus years, the last twenty have been more kind to them, as the word nerd has undergone a redefinition and a certain renaissance that cannot be denied. The pejorative has progressed from the worst thing you could call someone, to people dropping it casually to describe their unique obsessions, and onto it being a compliment used to describe the erudite and computer-oriented who know how to code and eventually used that knowledge to develop AI to change everything from our TVs, to our kitchen appliances, and our cars. Who would’ve guessed that in a classroom filled with jocks, popular and cool kids, and various incarnations of the class clown that it would be the socially awkward, painfully shy, prototype Poindexter, in the quiet back corner of the room, that we’d all grow up and want to be?

Bedbugs, Ballads, and the Bubonic Background

September 25, 2023September 25, 2026 RilalyLeave a comment

The father-to-son relationship used to be so different, if we are to believe the definition they put out. I don’t know how much of it is true, but I know my dad revered his father. What changed?

Did we change this dynamic, or did our dads? The dads on those old fifties and sixties shows never had a hair out of place, and they wore a suit and tie a lot, even to dinner. It’s TV, idyllic images, all that. I got it, but if you talk to grown men from my dad’s generation, you’ll hear them talk about how different things were in their day. We all make fun of such talk now, but things were so different back then. They revered their fathers. The respect their fathers demanded led their sons to respect the people, places, and things around them. They respected personal property. I had no respect for other people’s property. I had no idea why our neighbor, Sam, kept yelling at me for stepping on his lawn. It’s grass, why do you care? They wore suits to work, to church, on airplanes, and at restaurants.

I’m not sure if my dad owned a pair of underwear that didn’t have at least one stain. I’m pretty sure he didn’t buy them that way. He just missed his opportunities so often that he didn’t have one 100% clean pair of underwear in his wardrobe. I also think he committed every violation of social decorum he could think up on an ear of corn. He’d breathe through his nose while eating it, he had to, because he’d suffocate if he didn’t. There were a couple of occasions when our eyes met, while he was doing it. It was so uncomfortable. “Take it easy on that thing Dad,” I said. “It’s not trying to get away.” Why would I strive to be this man? I often wondered. Did my dad’s dad violate standards and practices as often as he did, or did I call my dad out for his violations far more than he ever would his dad, a man he revered and respected? Who changed the father-to-son dynamic?

“Life isn’t all jokey jokey,” my dad would say to try to discourage me from joking around all the time. I sought the humorous side of life, the “jokey jokey” side. My son gets tired of all of jokes. Will he seek contrast? Will he be a more serious man? If a dad is geared to the more serious side, will the son instinctually seek the more serious? Is this specific dynamic born from the more general dynamics of the father-to-son relationship, because the son grows up laughing at the dad, or if the dad is such a jokester the son seeks to take life more seriously?

The one talent my dad had for humor was his ability to fart on demand. We all know farts. Some are more silent gastric releases and others fit the dictionary definition of “an explosion between the legs”. My dad did the latter so often that I often wonder if his talent was one of the primary reasons I had so many friends. They didn’t get in line to hear them, but once he started in, they didn’t want to leave our house. “This is funnier than anything on TV,” they agreed.

“How many times do you have to hear farts until they’re not funny anymore?” I asked them. It was an endless source of amusement to them, and my dad loved it as much as they did. He built material around his gastric releases. “I just blew her a kiss,” was his favorite line. He said that after he accidentally let a loud one go on an innocent, unsuspecting woman in a grocery store, and my friend was laughing so hard he couldn’t walk right for minutes. When I told my friend to stop laughing, “You are only encouraging him.” He said his laughter wasn’t about the fart as much as the wounded expression of the woman my fifty-something my dad farted on. I didn’t see her as the punchline of a joke, but as a fellow victim of his violations of standards and practices.

Dad also learned what he considered an award-winning phrase, following any expulsion of gas from his intestines, “Better to let it out and bear the shame than hold it in and bear the pain.” It kind of rhymed, so Dad considered it the literary equivalent of Robert Frost or Shakespeare. It was as close as my dad ever came to citing poetry. I don’t know who came up with that phrase, but I’d have fantasies of doing vile, disgusting things to them, and I am not a violent man. I don’t view violence as a way of dealing with confrontation, but after decades of hearing that phrase, I developed some empathy for those desperately seeking to find a way to end their pain. I’ve heard some talk about getting in a time machine to kill Hitler to save humanity from what he inflicted upon so many in the world at the time. I’ve thought the same about the originator of this phrase. Whenever my dad would say it, my friends would just devolve to gales of laughter, and those vile, disgusting thoughts of violence seemed like a final solution to me.

When they’d turn to me with their laughter, I basically said, “I find him absolutely vile.” That’s right, for a portion of my life I played the priggish, old woman to my dad’s Rodney Dangerfield character in a movie. If you’ve ever seen one of Rodney’s old movies, a rich, snobbish old woman would say, “I find him utterly repulsive,” with her nose up in the air. Rodney would say, “It’s a party, loosen up babe.” To which the woman would punctuate her disgust with some final chuff of revulsion. My dad was the Dangerfield character who stuck his thumb up the arse of the institution, and I was his institution.

I heard so many farts by the time I hit my teens that I could no longer find humor in the fart as a teenage boy. Does that strike you as profound, because how many teenage boys love to fart, hear a great fart, and break up a room with a well-placed explosion between the legs? I missed out on all those traditional teenage fart jokes when I was a teen, because I considered the fart joke tired by the time I hit junior high.

I was so tired of the fart joke that I missed out on what many agree is the funniest fart joke of all time, the nun letting one go in church. This nun was our teacher, and she was every bit the prim and proper nun. What she let go was powered by the physical exertion of going from the kneeling position to the sitting position. It was loud, it was during a service, and I was sitting right next to her. That’s funny now, right? To 99.9% of the pre-teen, male demographic that’s not just funny, it’s once-in-a-lifetime, you-had-to-be-there hilarious. Church is one of those places where every pre-teen gets the giggles over the dumbest stuff, but a nun farting in church might qualify as the most shockingly hilarious event in a pre-teen boy’s life, and to the 99.9% contingent, it is. There is a .1% of grade school-era boys, however, a grouping who have heard so many farts in life, so many fart jokes, and so much fart laughter that our reservoir of fart laughter is so dried up that we can’t even smile at a prim and proper nun farting in church. We know each other too, we .1 percenters. We spot one another, down the pew, and we nod one of those closed-eye nods, amidst all the other students gasping for air though laughter. It’s the we-have-the-same-dads nod. We’re members of this very exclusive club we wanted no part in, so we smile and force laughter, all the while knowing that our flatulating fathers deprived us of our golden era of the fart joke.

Don’t Let the BedBugs Bite

“My mom was an unusual person too. She had quirks, but thanks to her bizarre husband, we considered her quirks unremarkable. She had her own unusual sayings and traditions. The traditions she learned and passed down had nothing to do with farts, or anything as revolting as my dad’s. She was our version of a normal person, and we needed her dose of normalcy to combat everything being thrown at us. She used to read to us every night, she tucked us in, and gave us one of her sweet, motherly kisses before heading to the door. Then, right after she told us how much she loved us, and before she closed the door she’d say, “Sleep tight, and don’t let the bedbugs bite.”

“I didn’t really think about what bedbugs were back then, as it was just something my mom said to me every night since as far back as I knew. I’ve never been a big interpreter either, as evidenced by the fact that when I would tell a friend I like a song, they would say, “Do you know what that song is about?” I wouldn’t say that I never cared, as I’m sure I did when I was younger and trying to fit in, but I never cared so much that it changed my opinion about the song. I’ve always kind of had this sense that artists who wrote deep, meaningful and powerful lyrics were trying to convince everyone how smart they were. My appreciation of music has always been that the lyrics should fit the music, nothing more and nothing less. Save the deep meaning for your college thesis. As a result of this mindset, I didn’t bother to ask my mom what bedbugs were for a long time. When I did, and she explained it to me, I wondered if there were tiny, little bugs crawling all over my bed and my body? Is this common, and what do we have to do to prevent them from biting me? She didn’t intend to introduce this horrific thought into my already creative mind. She thought this familiar, little rhyme conveyed sentiment. I love you, and have a good night’s sleep. Oh, and don’t let the bedbugs bite. This was my mom’s idea of punctuating love. She did it so often that by the time I started thinking about what it was she was saying, it was already an accepted part of our parting ritual at the end of a night. I also think she just liked the phrase, because it rhymes, “Sleep tight, and don’t let the bedbugs bite.”

“What I didn’t know until I researched it is that fossils and early writings discovered that bedbugs date back to ancient Egypt and Rome and industrialization and immigration brought them to America. So, when ancient Egyptians issued such warnings, they meant it. The mattresses they slept on were veritable breeding grounds, made of straw and feathers, and those mattresses were held up on a series of latticework ropes. The origin of the phrase sleep tight was probably made in reference to the parents warning their children to make sure those ropes were tightened to prevent sagging. If they didn’t tightened their ropes, the fear was bedbugs would find a way onto and into their mattresses. Bedbugs cannot jump or fly, but they didn’t know that. Another theory speculates that sleep tight referred to parents telling their children to keep their pajamas tightly wound to prevent bedbugs from getting in, but all these theories involve speculation over the origin of the phrase. The point though is that it’s possible that some form of this phrase could be hundreds to thousands of years old.

“If we took a step back to realize what we’re now saying about bedbugs, before we close the door to immerse our kids in total darkness, where their unusually creative minds spin just about everything we say into some form of horror that causes them insomnia and nightmares, we might want to give some thought to ending the tradition that suggests these nasty, little germ-ridden insects are probably going to bite us unless … unless they somehow don’t let them. That’s a question I never asked “How do I go about not letting them mom?” Seriously? “Are there proactive, preventative measures we should be employing here, and why are you letting me to do this alone? You’re supposed to be the parent, the protector and defender, or something other than the door closer who wishes me luck against these things.” Isn’t this basically what we’re saying when we say, good night, sleep tight, and don’t let the bedbugs bite? We’re saying that we’ve found all of our proactive, preventative measures pointless, and you’re kind of on your own here, sweetie. Love you! Now, good night, and don’t let them bite. Slam! Is this why Joey developed that cute, little habit of sleeping with his Mattel sword and shield? Is he preparing for battle?

“My mom never gave any thought to what she was saying, it was just a tradition that her mother passed down to her, and she passed down to us. These traditions are an inner node of our family tree that we consciously, and subconsciously, use to connect to that family tree, and it’s their way to thoughtlessly define love. There’s also that added ingredient, in some weird and inexplicable way, that we see as a definition of quality parenting. We don’t think about it. We just do it. It’s a set of parental instructions or system of rules written into our code and our peculiar programming language. It’s as much a part of our fabric as familial tales of our cranky old uncle swearing every time he has to stand up, the way our grandpa makes noises when he sits, and playing cars with our cousins on kitchen tile in our pajamas.

Ring Around the Rosie

“These generations-old, odd traditions that influence and enhance who we are surfaced when I picked my kid up from school. Some kids, somewhere on the playground, began singing the borderline horrific song Ring around the Rosie. Everyone knows this singalong song, right? Why do we all know it, and who taught these kids this tradition? We did. Who taught us? We just sort of pick it up from somewhere, and no one remembers where. It’s a tradition that was, is, and probably will always be around. I smiled fondly when I heard them sing it. Ring around the Rosie, sing it with me now, pocket full of posies, ashes ashes, we all fall down.

“Apparently, there are numerous versions of this song sung around the world, and some of you might know a different one, but that’s the one we sang in my pocket of the world. For as many versions as there are, there are nearly as many interpretations of the lyrics. As kids we sang it just to sing something while we did something else, but some folklorists suggest the lyrics ‘ring around the rosie’ might have developed as a result of kids teasing other kids when they spotted a red owie on their arm. Any owie, I assume, was subject to ridicule, and if you know a kid, you know they can get bruises, bumps, and red spots anywhere. They can get them after a rough session on the playground or walking through an aisle at Walgreen’s. “Where did you get that bruise on your arm? Joey” “I don’t know,” and they don’t. They really don’t. It’s as much a mystery to them as it is to you.

“When one of these 1665-era kids of London spotted an owie on one of their friend’s arm, they sang Ring Around the Rosie to tease him to ostensibly inform him that he might want to consider the idea that he might have …. the plague. The plague! Some call it The Great Plague of London, others called it Black Death, and historical chroniclers suggest it was the last major epidemic of The Bubonic Plague in England. Some trace the origin of this little song to this Bubonic Plague that slaughtered over 100,000 Londoners at the time, and the total population of London, at the time, was around 460,000. So, it killed nearly one in four Londoners.

“Ring around the Rosie! Yeah, we saw your little owie, Joey, and we’re pretty sure that means when the bearer-of-the-dead comes around screaming “Bring out your dead!” we’re going to be pitching your body in, so he can throw your body in one of the local burning, plague pits.

So many people were dying from the plague that the various locales couldn’t keep up. Those of us from an area of the country that can be affected by wintry conditions know that there are times when police won’t respond to minor car accidents. They tell citizens to exchange information, and drive on. This is what was happening in 1665-England. If a loved one died, the family would wait till nightfall and put the body of their loved one in a bearer-of-the-dead’s cart. He would stroll through the night with his agricultural cart, yelling out, “Bring out your dead!” as fans of Monty Python’s 1975 movie Holy Grail know. When his cart was full, the corpse carrier would take his load to a plague pit to burn and bury the corpses. 1665 England didn’t bother with funerals, ceremonies, caskets, or graves. There were just too many corpses in too short a time. So, unless the citizen had the money to get a proper service, their family threw their corpse in a plague pit, and we can only guess that little Joey probably saw a few of his cousins, aunts, and friends thrown onto the corpse carrier’s cart or into the pit.

We all use various defense mechanisms to deal with the horror happening around us, and kids are more sensitive to the horrors happening around them, thus more confused about how they should prevent the horror from getting inside their head. To accomplish this, they developed this cute and brutal little rhyme to suggest that their friends –or that kid who sits two seats up and to the right in class — to let Joey know he is headed for the burning corpse pit soon. And if the interpretations of these lyrics are anywhere close to the historical truth, we think the lyrics are so sing songy cute that we’ve been teaching it to our kids for three hundred, plus years?

“Some folklorists further suggest that the ‘pocket full of posies’ portion of verse was used to mock those kids whose parents believed that if their Joey carried flowers in his pocket, it would prove a homeopathic remedy to prevent the onset of the plague. So, this portion of the song basically says, “Even though you had a pocket full of posies, you still caught the plague, Joey, SUCKER!”

The conclusion of the song might be the most horrific, as the “Ashes, Ashes, we all fall down” lyrics suggest that Joey’s tormentors knew that they were going to get it too, we all will, and we’re all going to die en masse. One would think that in the wake of COVID, we should consider ending the tradition that involves a sing-a-long about catching plagues, airborne or otherwise, that could slaughter hundreds of thousands.

“I’ve heard that the folklore surrounding these interpretations of the lyrics might not be true, but even the most obnoxious, cellphone-checking sleuths will have to admit that there’s enough speculation among folklorists who’ve examined the lyrics of the song that we should probably stop teaching it as a sweet, pleasant “singalong” rhyming song our kids can sing on a playground. I mean, how can anyone spin “Ashes ashes we all fall down?” as anything other than a relatively disturbing dystopic image? A creative, young mind might even spin the lyrics as a warning for all participants to prepare for a nuclear winter?

***

“Almost everyone here tonight is a complex, fully formed adult who has lived through several different, complicated eras of life, met thousands of different people, and read at least a few books. Yet, we don’t know what we’re doing anymore than our parents did when it comes to parenting, and even if we did, we wouldn’t know what to do about it. I’m sure some of you are more confident in your parenting skills, have a master plan, or whatever, but most of us are just making it up as we go along.

Have you ever had another parent look to you as a model of good parenting? It’s unnerving. You’re looking to me as some sort of guide for good parenting? What kind of dysfunctional and confused parent must you be to look to me? Good God man, I’m a mess. My model for everything I do, as a parent, is my dad, and the only talents I know about involved breathing through his nose while eating corn and flatulating on demand. You know me. You know how I turned out. I’m this big ball of the contradictions, hypocrisies, and family traditions that involve dystopic songs and nighttime warnings of bug infestations that my parents taught me. The greatest thing my dad ever taught me was independence, and there are a vast number of merits to teaching your children how to solve their own problems, play alone, and to prepare them for the reality that they’re going to spend most of their time alone, but the constant refrain of my dad’s parenting was, “You’re on your own kid.” I learned most of the strengths and weaknesses of total independence as an eleven-year-old. The basis of my relationship with my dad was based on his three commandments: “Don’t get in trouble, keep your grades up, and don’t touch my stuff.”

“One interesting byproduct fell out of my dad’s relatively dysfunctional definition of parenting, and that was that I learned that he didn’t care about me near as much as I thought he did. He didn’t attend my sporting events, so he wasn’t cheering me on from the stands, but he wasn’t booing either. This led me to the notion that no one else is cheering us on from the proverbial stands either. We’re on your own here. They might applaud an accomplishment of ours in the moment, but they really don’t care near as much as we think. But, and here’s the element of life it took me decades to fully comprehend, no one cares as much as you think about our failures either. It’s one thing to say people don’t care much about our success. That’s ours to love, cherish, and celebrate, and most people might give us a “Congratulations!” in the moment, but they don’t understand the full import of our accomplishment as much as they should. The epiphany my dad incidentally taught me, and I now altruistically give you is: No one cares near as much as we think they do when we fail. When we reach that point of what we consider an ultimate failure, we’re just sure everyone from our parents to that guy in the checkout line at The Supersaver knows what just happened to us. The truth is, they’re not paying near as much attention as we think. This is not only a bizarre way of thinking, it’s wrong, right?

The fact that people don’t pay as much attention as we think, or fear, is actually documented in various psychological studies. They’ve performed tests that involved a student walking in front of a huge college classroom to interrupt a professor and ask them a question. That student, in question, was wearing one of the loudest, most awful T-shirts the researchers could find. The result, 20% of the other students noticed that shirt. When a separate but similar test was done with a student wearing the finest suit known to man interrupted a class to ask the professor a question, 10% noticed that suit. They weren’t paying attention to a display of success, but they weren’t paying attention to an epic failure either. Those reading this probably assume that they’d notice, “because I’m an observant person.” My guess is those students thought they were anywhere from observant to unusually observant, because we all do. The truth is that we’re not paying as much attention as we think, and they aren’t either.

Some might find it depressing to learn that we’re all alone in the world, but if we turn that study around, we might find that it frees us up to try things we otherwise wouldn’t if we thought everyone was paying attention. If we latch onto the idea that no one is paying near as much attention to what we do, who we wear, or those silly jokes we tell, then just do what you do with the knowledge that no one’s really paying any attention.