Christmas with the Phelons

There are few things more loathsome than those family letters that accompany Christmas cards.  Most often written in the third person by some erstwhile relative with a deluded self-belief in his or her writing and parenting skills, they tell tales ad nauseam of the past 365 days for each individual family member while holding you hostage to things you don’t care about anyway.  Opening an otherwise innocuous card and having one of these paper bombs fall out is like having an uninvited guest that just won’t leave.  Over the years I have learned that receiving mail at home is not that dissimilar to that of a work environment.  To be efficient in any office setting the goal is to “touch paper once.”  And to that end I now stand directly over the crosscut shredder when opening certain cards.

So, here’s the letter I’m sending with each card this Christmas:

Dear family and friends,

This past year has been an especially good one for the Phelon family.

We got cable TV at our house this year.  Brother Bobby hooked it up all by himself.  I tend to worry too much, but I just couldn’t look when he was all the way up that pole.  Bobby’s proof positive that you can learn something useful from your time in jail.  He’s pretty sure he can save us some money on our telephone and gas bills, too.

Oldest brother Tom got in a bit of a pickle earlier this year.  I feel like I’m partly to blame.  See, I told him I thought he could make good money taking pictures.  But when I saw him come back from that art gallery with his arms full, I was pretty sure he misunderstood.  Of course you know what a kidder our Tommy is.  At his hearing he admitted what he did, but said he was framed.  The judge didn’t think it was funny but only added an extra year to his probation.  So, we’re thankful for that.

Youngest sister Brandy graduated from eighth grade this year after three tries. That’s a record for our family and we’re so proud of her because her counselor told her they figure they’ve taught her everything they could.  She’s definitely going places.

The twins are doing a lot better this year.  Most of their hair has grown back after that freak accident playing “Flamethrower” with the charcoal lighter.  I still think there should be better warning labels on those cans.  Somebody could really get hurt.

Cousin Tracy has come to live with us for a while.  My brother says she’s been hanging around with the wrong crowd and thinks that spending some time with a stable family will do her a lot of good.  We’re just happy to help.

Big news about our daddy, Jim.  After being out of work for the past nine years, Jim took a correspondence course on electronics repair.  He says there’s hardly anyone out there that can fix 8-track players.  Now, he’s just waiting for the phone to ring.

As for me, I just can’t believe how much money I’ve won from lotteries in Nigeria.  Funny thing is, I don’t remember entering any of them.  They just keep sending me checks and I keep cashing them.  Merry Christmas, me!

Wishing you all the blessings that we have,

The Phelons


Copyright © 2010 by David Mertz

Grammarcide — Murdering the King's English

Grammar, pronunciation, and enunciation are like the trifecta of linguistics and phonetics and if anybody is going to make a mess of it, leave it to Americans.  When it comes to English we’re sloppy, careless, and content with the fact there are no consequences for mangling our own language.

November 15 signals the start of firearms deer season in Michigan.  Every hunter buys a license, buys a rifle, buys ammunition, and proceeds to sell his grammatical soul to deerspeak for that period of time.  If you are within earshot of any two people dressed in plaid shirts and orange hats you will inescapably hear one say to the other about his day in the woods “…And then I seen ‘em.  And they was lookin’ and lookin’.”  And if you wonder, “What’s wrong with that?”, you’re obviously a deer hunter.  The remarkable thing is that this exchange is always comprised of that precise wording.  It’s like a pledge of allegiance taken at the time of licensure — ‘…and then I seen ‘em’ — or a secret handshake — ‘…and they was lookin’ and lookin.’  And it transcends genders, socioeconomic groups, and all levels of intelligence.  If William F. Buckley were alive and a deer hunter, for two weeks in Michigan he would succumb and say, 

“…And then I seen em.  And they was lookin’ and lookin’.”  Mercifully for most afflicted — and all the rest of us — this impermanent condition reverses itself on December 1.

I’m pretty sure that anymore to get a job in television news you need a college degree in communication, broadcast journalism, or broadcast news.  And I’m also pretty sure a degree of that kind requires a fair amount of English.  And yet from local news stations all the way to national network news, seemingly no one can properly pronounce February.  It’s not Feb-yoo-airy or Feb-er-airy.  It’s Feb-roo-airy.  And it doesn’t help that some spineless dictionaries now deem the pejorative Feb-yoo-airy an acceptable pronunciation using the rationale, “if you can’t beat em’, join em.’”  Why don’t we just jerk out that second “r” instead or say that the second “r” is actually silent?  To get a degree that allows you to speak on-air in front of thousands of people there ought to be an oral twelve-question final exam requiring a score of 100 percent.  I know eleven out of twelve ordinarily isn’t bad.  That’s 92% and would get you an “A” on almost any exam.  But, tough!  Say all twelve properly or you don’t graduate.  And if somehow someone sneaks through, the onus is on human resources to retest that job applicant.  Can’t say all twelve?  Next!  It’s not Feb-yoo-airy!  Like fingernails on a blackboard.

If you slur your words, run words together, or routinely invoke relaxed pronunciation you may find a promising career as an on-air weather forecaster.  In fact meteorologist actually means mumbler.  If you can’t enunciate the word meteorologist, you are well on your way to being one.  Again, it seems to me that you have to be a graduate from an accredited university and, as part of the curriculum, been required to have above average public speaking skills.  So, at what point do the wheels fall off?  Because they do.  What should be information clearly articulated and easily understood ends up essentially unintelligible.  Case in point:  “Looking at the six-uh-ten-day forecast, purr-ee normal.  Tem-uh-churz will problee be in the high thur-eez tuh low for-eez from Cal-ak to 

Buh-doz-ghee with a buh-den-shul for skah-urd shars on Sah-ur-day.”  Which in English means, “Looking at the six-to-ten-day forecast, pretty normal.  Temperatures will probably be in the high thirties to low forties from Cadillac to Petoskey with a potential for scattered showers on Saturday.”  Perfect.  Like hair on soap.

Handyman Tales — Volume 1

I have a talent for fixing things — a wide variety of things — that many others don’t.  I don’t know how you come by some of this knowledge.  All of a sudden it’s just there sometimes.  My neighbors know that about me.  These folks are intelligent people, but occasionally everybody needs a hand.  Either they don’t know how to fix something, don’t want to be bothered fixing something, or they have spent so much time trying to fix something it just makes sense to let someone else have a whack at it.  That’s where I come in — the neighborhood handyman.  I love being a handyman.  And the ultimate goal of any handyman worth his salt is to fix the unfixable.

And so, I got a call from one of my neighbors who had just returned from a trip to find that he had an issue with his refrigerator.  Not wanting to admit defeat, and not wanting to spend the big bucks on a service call, he had tried for hours to find the cure.  Finally in an act of concession (and under a whole lot of spousal pressure) he asked for my expertise.  Again, he’s not stupid.  I’m a whole lot cheaper than the appliance repairperson.

When I got there he explained each step he had taken to resolve his issue and I listened carefully.  All logical actions.  Some fixes are simple and some are complicated.  I like the ones that check my abilities — test my mettle.  So, upon completion of this task beyond normal intelligence, I wrote the following Limerick:

I once got a call from a client,

Whose Sub-Zero wasn’t compliant.

It wasn’t before.

But inside the door,

He found that his light was defiant.

The tester I took from my pocket,

Confirmed there was power to the socket.

This "puzzle obscure,"

Was for no amateur.

It was my job to finally unlock it.

I said that I might have a clue.

At least one that I thought I’d pursue.

A twist to the right,

And on came the light.

Problem solved without further ado.