We used to have names for people in our youth who made a bad impression. Any girl, doomed to never having a second date, who 1) dipped her straw into the guy’s malt or tied a knot in his straw, 2) expected the guy to pay for her meal, or 3) (in later, more affluent times) ordered the most expensive item on the menu, got relegated to the lowest rung of huwomanity. She became a “mensa.”

We’d dismiss these junior high and high school schoolmates with much derision, even though those about whom we’d say, “Es una mensa” more likely wouldn’t have dreamed of a second date with us anyway.

My English/Spanish dictionary defines mensa or menso as someone who’s dull and witless. It’s a coincidence, then, that Mensa (with a capital “M”) is also Latin for “table” and is the name of a prestigious organization of bright people, those whose intelligence is verified through a tough series of tests.

Continue reading →

In an incident that happens only in movies, one day my father received a windfall — literally, some 20 years ago, while in his 80s, as he spent time in his garden.Mostly, he cleaned, scooping up dead leaves. It was early spring. As he bent over to scoop up a pile, he noticed some faded currency, which he took to be a dollar bill. Look again, J.D. — that’s a hundred dollar bill.

Continue reading →

A game/contest on National Public Radio, which I find addictive, asks participants to guess the title of a book, movie, poem, etc. on the basis of various verbal clues. The catch is that one letter in one word in the answer will have been changed.For example, the person who is “it” gets told that this movie concerns Russell Crowe, as Prof. John Forbes Nash, who is pondering the loveliness of a chocolate confection. How much time lapses before the guesser comes up with “A Beautiful Mint”?

Continue reading →

The world of deadline journalism presents challenges. On countless occasions, I’ve explained to a critical reader — or an even more critical reading public — that we at the Optic didn’t make the errors; rather, the typos resulted from something else.Like the kid who swears, “Gee, Mom, I was just playing, and all of a sudden, the vase fell all by itself — honest,” we’d like to hear from readers who say, “Out of the 20,000 words you printed today, 19,998 were correct.” But we seldom hear about correct spelling or punctuation.

Continue reading →