Say what? (Q and A edition) with intermittent comments by your roving editor

[Someone sent me the following factoids in an e-mail message. They may or may not be true, but they certainly help to pass the time. I’ll let you do your own research. --RWP]

Q: Why do men’s clothes have buttons on the right but women’s clothes have buttons on the left?
A: When buttons were invented, they were very expensive and worn primarily by the rich. Since most people are right-handed, it is easier to push buttons on the right through holes on the left. [Easier than what? Comparisons that are unfinished simply won’t do. It’s rather like saying it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. --RWP] Because wealthy women were dressed by maids, dressmakers put the buttons on the maid’s right! And that’s where women’s buttons have remained since. [This does not explain why wealthy men were not also dressed by maids, a perfectly delightful idea if you ask me. --RWP]

Q: Why do ships and aircraft use ‘mayday’ as their call for help?
A: This comes from the French word m’aidez meaning ‘help me‘ ’ -- and is pronounced, approximately, ‘mayday.’ [This one is definitely true. We mentioned it the other day in our May Day post, which was published not on May 1 as you might expect but on April 30. Go figure. However, in New Zealand, m’aidez is pronounced, approximately, ‘meedee.’ --RWP]

Q: Why are zero scores in tennis called ‘love’?
A: In France, where tennis became popular, round zero on the scoreboard looked like an egg and was called l’oeuf (French for ‘egg’). When tennis was introduced in the U.S., Americans mispronounced it ‘love.’ [I may be wrong, but I think someone is pulling our collective legs. Still, there is the incontrovertible fact that zero is sometimes referred to as ‘goose egg.’ Also, it is indeed fortunate that France was where tennis became popular, because in Italy a round zero on the scoreboard looked like a pizza. --RWP]

Q: Why do Xs at the end of a letter signify kisses?
A: In the Middle Ages, when many people were unable to read or write, documents were often signed using an X. Kissing the X represented an oath to fulfill obligations specified in the document. The X and the kiss eventually became synonymous. [This does not explain why Os at the end of a letter signify hugs. Maybe it has something to do with either eggs or pizza. -- RWP]

Q: Why is shifting responsibility to someone else called ‘passing the buck’?
A: In card games, it was once customary to pass an item called a buck from player to player to indicate whose turn it was to deal. If a player did not wish to assume the responsibility of dealing, he would ‘pass the buck’ to the next player. [It would be all too easy here to make a comment involving the homonyms ‘doe’ and ‘dough’ so I will contain myself. --RWP]

Q: Why do people clink their glasses before drinking a toast?
A: It used to be common for someone to try to kill an enemy by offering him a poisoned drink. [It is now common for someone to try to kill an enemy by constructing an improvised explosive device (I.E.D.) using a pressure cooker, some vaseline, and a few other ingredients. --RWP] To prove to a guest that a drink was safe, it became customary for a guest to pour a small amount of his drink into the glass of the host. Both men would drink it simultaneously. When a guest trusted his host, he would only touch or clink the host’s glass with his own. [Remember, the pellet with the poison’s in the vessel with the pestle; the chalice from the palace has the brew that is true. --RWP]

Q: Why is someone who is feeling great said to be ‘on cloud nine’?
A: Types of clouds are numbered according to the altitudes they attain, with nine being the highest cloud. If someone is on cloud nine, that person is floating well above worldly cares. [Who does the numbering? And why are there only nine types of clouds? Why not twenty-three? So many questions, so little time. --RWP]

Q: In golf, where did the term ‘caddie’ come from?
A: Mary, Queen of Scots, went to France as a young girl. When Louis, King of France, learned that she loved the Scots game called ‘golf’ he had the first course outside of Scotland built for her enjoyment. To make sure she was properly chaperoned (and guarded) while she played, Louis hired cadets from a military school to accompany her. Mary liked this a lot, and when she returned to Scotland (which turned out to be not a very good idea in the long run), she took the practice with her. In French, the word cadet is pronounced ‘ca-day’ and the Scots changed it into ‘caddie.’ [To this day, Mary, Queen of Scots, is referred to in some quarters as a ‘mulligan.’ Speaking of quarters... --RWP]

Q: Did you ever wonder why dimes, quarters and half dollars have notches (milling), while pennies and nickels do not?
A: The U.S. Mint began putting notches on the edges of coins containing gold and silver to discourage holders from shaving off small quantities of the precious metals. Dimes, quarters, and half dollars are notched because they used to contain silver. Pennies and nickels aren’t notched because the metals they contain are not valuable enough to shave. [My face contains no metals at all, and yet it is valuable enough to shave. --RWP]

Q: Why are many coin banks shaped like pigs?
A: Long ago, dishes and cookware in Europe were made of dense orange clay called ‘pygg.’ When people saved coins in jars made of this clay, the jars became known as ‘pygg banks.’ When an English potter misunderstood the word, he made a container that resembled a pig, and it caught on.

[As Ethel Barrymore once said, “That’s all there is; there isn’t any more.” Any more and you might be tempted to make a pygg of yourself. --RWP]

Thank God for small favors

Read this.

Then watch this (5:13).

For those of you who never follow directions, I will now explain what you have just not read and what you have just not watched.

Firstly, you have just not read “The Walrus and the Carpenter” by Lewis Carroll with accompanying illustrations by John Tenniel. In its inimitable style and no lack of detail, Wikipedia says that “The Walrus and the Carpenter” is “a narrative poem by Lewis Carroll that appeared in his book Through the Looking-Glass, published in December 1871. The poem is recited in chapter four, by Tweedledum and Tweedledee to Alice. The poem is composed of 18 stanzas and contains 108 lines, in an alternation of iambic trimeters and iambic tetrameters. The rhyme scheme is ABCBDB, and masculine rhymes appear frequently. The rhyming and rhythmical scheme used, as well as some archaisms and syntactical turns, are those of the traditional English ballad.” (If, like me, you looked up Wikipedia’s article on Through the Looking Glass at this point, you have discovered that the full title of the work is Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There and that Lewis Carroll is the nom de plume of one Charles Lutwidge Dodgson and that he wrote it as the sequel to his Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, which was published in 1865. And if, also like me, you are able to distinguish tetrameter from tetracyclene but have no clue about the traditional English ballad and have no wish to find out, God bless you, Sir or Madam, as the case may be.)

Secondly, you have just not watched “The Walrus and The Carpenter” scene from the 1951 animated film Alice in Wonderland from Walt Disney Productions. It begins innocently enough, with a shot of Alice with Tweedledum and Tweedledee, but soon it bears about as much resemblance to the original version as Marilyn Monroe bears to Mary, Queen of Scots. Furthermore, the phrase “Calooh! Callay!” is included in the animated version, and that phrase is actually part of “Jabberwocky” and not “The Walrus and the Carpenter.” The animators also stole a part of evoked the Pied Piper of Hamelin legend when they had the Walrus play a flute to entice the baby oysters into following him.

Thirdly, it is entirely up to you which version you like best. Even if you prefer Tim Burton’s 2009 version starring Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter, I will say nothing. I am not the culture police. No cartoon or twisted-sister version (Tim Burton, are you listening?) would be possible without the original, of course, but who is to say who is the more talented? Not me, that’s who.

Fourthly, any connection in your mind between this post and the illustrations at the end of my recent post about cabbage is purely intentional.

Fifthly, you should be grateful that you live in the twenty-first century and are reading this post in the air-conditioned comfort of your own home instead of living in the seventeenth or eighteenth century and listening to a sermon from a Puritan divine down at the local Congregational Church, because if you were, you would not be nearing the conclusion at this point but would be forced to sit there in austere surroundings on a hard wooden bench for another two or three hours without any padding whatsoever except what your own derriere could provide, trying to stay awake and feign interest until the Puritan divine had reached Thirty-sixthly.