Saying Goodbye

As my students at Lingua Espresso know, I will be leaving my post at the end of March 2009. As a result, this blog is now "going static." On the bright side, if you liked Rants, Raves, and General Writings, you can look for my new blog, Dixie Cup Combo, debuting in the next month or so :-)

The Light Side, the Dark Side, and the . . . Fish Side

Hello to all my Lingua Espresso students on this fine Monday in March :-) Today's blog is a copy of a newsletter article I did for my OTHER job as a massage therapist. It's a funny piece of writing about our three goldfish, which are a kind of mascot for us. A mascot is a living symbol representing a group of people, often a sports team and their fans. Mascots are often animals: for example Louisiana State University's mascot is Mike the Tiger. Sometimes, though, mascots can be personalized aspects of nature; for example, my high school mascot was the cyclone (also sometimes known as a whirlwind or a tornado). And finally, mascots can be a type of human with a particular job or characteristic (for example, the Nebraska Cornhuskers).

............................................................................


Most everyone knows that Massage Envy Northgate is more than just a group of talented, highly-trained therapists with killer forearms. More than a team of bright-eyed front sales-staff with perky phone voices. More even than the strong blonde spirit of entrepreneurship that guides all our doings. Yes, there is more. Three more to be exact. Three tiny gold spirits of aquatic tranquility. And their names are . . . well, no one is quite sure what their names are.

No one knows obviously, what their little fishy mothers called them, or if they even called them anything. Perhaps they simply resisted eating them and let them swim their own way to a new life. When I began my own research into whether or not they had corporate identities, I only knew them privately as Peter, Paul, and Mary. For those of you too young to know, Peter, Paul and Mary were a famous 1960s folk music group who gave us such favorites as their own take on Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “Puff the Magic Dragon,” and my personal favorite, “If I Had a Hammer.” And sometimes when I visit the couples’ room, I quietly sing them a variant of the latter, as in

Oh, if I had a hammer,
I’d hammer in the morning,
I’d hammer in the evening,
All over this land . . .
And then I’d hammer that blasted shelf back into the wall in Room 6, cause I’m anal, and it drives me crazzzeeeee . . . .

Not surprisingly though, I found at least two other people who had names for them. Nikki calls them Caesar, Brutus, and John, and gave me a somewhat Shakespearean explanation of the one that rules, the one that stabs the others in the back, and the one that hides in the water plants “like a little saint.” Interesting, eh? However, Michelle seems to love them most, and knows them by size: Shamu (L), Jasper (M), and Grape Ape (S). As Michelle often works an early morning shift, she comes in, checks their water, turns the lights on for them as they have been in the dark all night, and tries to make sure that no one is over-feeding them.

Most people, however, just call them “the fish.” Jo said that if she had to name them, Larry, Moe and Curly might be okay. And Pat suggested we call them Jack, perhaps collectively and looking at Jack when she said it. “But what if they are little girl fish, not little boy fish?” asked Charles. “What’s the difference?” said Pat, still looking at Jack. “Jack would be fine for a little girl.” (I laughed; I couldn’t help myself, Jack.)

I did find a few people who weren’t fish fans. Janis asked if they were dead when I brought them up, and Kasey admitted to hating fish because “they always die” when she gets them, and Sam threw one in the toilet the other day without warning her, and she screamed her head off.

But fish, if you ever get to read a copy of this, overall we love you, though it might not seem so when a couple of us are heard bargaining over “who has to be on the fish side this time.” And even when some people forget to add water to your fountain and you have to swim sideways, please forgive them their sins. For you are not only tiny gold spirits of aquatic tranquility, you are the only mascots we have. Except that gigantic horrifying Christmas Elf, but we won’t go into that.

Dial-a-Trade

As everyone knows, the US has been suffering a terrible economic down-turn since the Fall of 2008. Many people have lost jobs and many more have been forced to cut back on spending in order to pay for the necessities of life such as food, shelter, and various medical costs. However, saving money on things we need is made easier in America by the existence of many Internet resources. Ebay.com and Half.com, for example, are two places one can go to purchase a variety of used and new items from individuals, not big stores. And there is also Freecycle.org, a Yahoo-based group where everything is FREE and listed under the tags "offered" (you want to give an item away) and "wanted" (you want to know if anyone has this sitting around the house not using it and wants to give it away).

Yet while my Japanese students at Lingua Espresso might know about such modern discount ways of getting useful things, I was thinking that they might want to know more about the pre-Internet ways of getting things cheap (or even for free). I grew up in a semi-rural area of Arkansas known as "the River Valley," due to the fact that these are the towns that lie along the big Arkansas River that divides the state of Arkansas diagonally. Growing up in that area, long before the Internet, one of our biggest ways of advertising goods and services was the radio. And the most popular radio program for doing this in our area was called "River Valley Dial-a-Trade."

The River Valley Dial-a-Trade was first named in the days of rotary phones, or phones that you had to "dial" (old phones had no buttons to push). And the way this program worked was that people would call into the radio station and describe in their own words what items that they wanted to sell or give away for free. But before I go any further in explaining Dial-a-Trade, I want to give you a small lesson on Southern American vocabulary, as these are facts you might not know:

Reckon: this is a verb that means "think" or "guess"

Fixing to: this means "getting ready to" and is generally only used in the American South; other Americans will look at you strangely if you use this.

Hunt: this is a verb that using means to follow an animal and kill it. In the South, however, it often just means "to try to find" or "to look for."

Carry: this is a verb that generally means to pick up something non-human in your arms and transport it. However, in the South the object can be human and the verb can mean simply "take" as in "Can you carry me to the airport?" One last meaning when you add the word "on" is to "act upset": "She carried on for hours when we took away her cellphone."

Holler: this is a verb that means "to scream" or "to yell loudly." It may also just mean "to call" as in "Pick up the phone and holler at me if you need me to carry you to the airport."

Fussing: this means "to express unhappiness about something," as in "They were fussing and fighting and carrying on for hours."

So now back to Dial-a-Trade. I hated the program when I was a child. It reminded me that I lived in an extremely rural area when I wanted to be able to go out and see the world and possibly live in a place with LOTS of bookstores and not hogs and chickens. But now I occasionally like to remember the ads on Dial-a-Trade because they make me laugh and make me nostalgic. For example:

"Yeah, I'm over here in Dover, and I reckon I have about 3 big rolls of chicken wire that've been sitting against the barn for a while now. I'm fixing to give them away 'cause my wife's been fussing at me about them, so holler at me if your interested. My number is 479-123-4567. Oh, and if you've been hunting for a good dog, we also have a litter of little black pups. Their mother is a black lab, but we don't know who their daddy was. Feel free to carry your kids on down to take a look. Thanks."

Interesting, yes? I hope you've enjoyed this, as all Americans would call it, "trip down memory lane."