“Romeo’s
a rage-a-holic, which means he’s often pissed off, unlike the vast majority of
us gliding along devil-may-care.”
Andy Sipowicz, NYPD Blue
I have been accused of being caustic and I
admit to it. Sarcasm and cynicism—what I refer to as realism—make me laugh.
Ambrose Bierce, Andy Rooney, and the fictional, Andy Sipowicz are my heroes.
But it’s more than being caustic; it’s also about the clever words, what the
French call bon mots.
I went to see The Imitation Game with a friend last week. When the previews came
on, she turned to me and said, “Did you ever wonder why movie trailers are called previews?” which I thought was pretty funny. I almost never have a
clever comment when I need it—but I did have two, back when I was working, and
I savor them to this day.
For quite a few years, one of my bosses read
children’s Encyclopedias. He wanted
to learn something about as many things as he could and, because he knew I was
a non-fiction reader, he would quiz me. For example: every March 15th
he would stop at my desk on his way to his office and say, “The ides of March
are come.” And it was my job to remember the response: “Ay, Caesar, but not
gone.” Or, on April 1st it was, “April is the cruelest month,” to
which the second line is, “Breeding lilacs out of the dead land.” Then he hit
the American history portion of his reading and one day said to me, “Karla,
what is the largest piece of land the United States ever acquired and who was
the president?”
Yikes!
So I thought about the Louisiana Purchase and
Alaska and then, for some unknown reason and from unfamiliar part of my brain,
I came up with, “The swath of land that includes New Mexico, and Polk was the
president.” And I was right. It blew both of us away. Who even thinks about
James Polk? He’s like Martin Van Buren—largely forgotten. But I was in my glory
until July 14th when, alas, I forgot it was Bastille Day and
couldn’t remember the response to: “The secret of freedom lies in educating
people.”
The next time was at a Christmas luncheon for
the bookkeeping staff. My brother had been studying engineering and at
breakfast one day told Mom and me that the word, LASER is an acronym like SNAFU.
There were about a dozen of us at the luncheon, sitting around a lovely table
at the Country Club and for whatever reason my boss mentioned laser beams,
whereupon I said, “Oh, do you mean light amplification by stimulated emission
of radiation?” (LASER). People mumbled and wouldn’t look me in the eye and at
that moment my reputation for not being one of them was firmly cemented.
While not quite bon mots, these were my days in the sun as far as wowing people
with my remarks went—two in a life time. Perhaps, that’s why I write, so I can
give my characters the final word.
