An exchange, ongoing for years, has caused me to run for the dictionaries, all because of a single word: assassinate.

Bruce Wertz, a clerk for the Las Vegas City Schools, has assured me he’s still alive by giving me an unusual answer as to his health. I’ll ask, “How you doing, Bruce?”

Invariably, he replies, “I’m OK. I haven’t been assassinated this week.” Then he tacks this on: “And if I had been, I wouldn’t be telling you about it now.” Really?

Let me digress:

I had a friend who once asked me, “Are you on the wagon?” Well, yes and no. It’s like asking, “Have you stopped beating your wife? Give a simple yes or no, please.”

Some questions can’t be answered that way. Regarding being on the wagon, I found a couple of versions, which might or mightn’t involve a literal wagon. One source refers to placing on a wagon people who have pledged never again to touch spirituous liquor. To bruit about their sobriety, presumably, they parade around in public.

Another, also referring to a pledge created by various 19th century temperance groups, describes an imbiber’s promise to “drink only from the water wagon,” which was commonly seen around town, to moisten the dusty roads.

The point is not really whether one answers yes or no, but to whom it is asked. And to settle the looming question above, when my inquisitive friend, with whom I’d had a beer during the  Super Bowl, asked my status, well, I couldn’t say yes or no.

To say “Yes, I’m on the wagon” implies I’ve sworn off liquor. To say no suggests somehow I’ve fallen off and resumed liquor-laden ways.

Now let’s return to the assassination. Without trying to put down my friend Bruce, I posit it’s impossible for him to be assassinated. Prominent people are targets of assassins; presidents, religious leaders, heads of state may become such victims, but an ordinary citizen?

Yet, along cross-lingual lines, consider that in Spanish, an asesino is simply a hired killer, not necessarily one employed to kill a person of prominence.

Where do we draw the line on who is or isn’t assassinable? As for Bruce Wertz, I believe he doesn’t have a thing to worry about. Nor do I.

It’s interesting how much history can be encapsulated in this 11-letter word. An assassination generally involves a surprise attack. My reference identifies an assassin as a “member of the nizari branch of the Ismaili Muslins at the time of the Crusades, 11th through 13th centuries.”

These assassins were renowned as militant fanatics, reputed to have used hashish before going on murderous missions.

Four of our presidents, Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley and John F. Kennedy were assassinated, and there have been about 20 known attempts on U.S. presidents’ lives.

Finally, Bruce’s reply: that he has not been assassinated, is good news, but it’s really akin to asking someone if he’s asleep. That did happen, once during summer camp with the National Guard in Fort Bliss. Our first sergeant, Joe Sandoval, not only wanted the lights out in the barracks by a certain hour, but we needed to be asleep (or at least faking it).

So, he entered the darkened barracks and asked, “Is everybody asleep?”

“Yes,” replied the greenest recruit in the unit. Well, that reply cost us several extra pushups during physical training the next morning.

Some day, that private will get his. But no, it won’t be an assassination.

• • •

A recent column on games we used to play drew a bit of feedback. Harry Leippe said I’d forgotten to include mumblety-peg, an old outdoor game played by children using pocketknives. According to one online source, kids placed a peg 2 to 3 inches into the ground, with the loser needing to extract it with his/her teeth. I know no further details, but that information might explain why some of our toothsome citizens now have buckteeth.

And April Rains Hoogerhuis, the daughter of Julian Rains, my former schoolmate at Immaculate Conception, said that during her childhood she and her friends didn’t need fancy balls, skip ropes, jacks, bats or gloves. “Just give me a pile of dirt and I was happy.”

April has the right idea. And that’s my notion of childhood fun. Once, when a truck backed up to our “casita” to deposit a load of coal, my sister Bingy, my brother Severino and I thought we’d gone to heaven as we jumped onto the piles of coal, beslubbering one another’s faces with the soot.

Of course, Mom, failing to grasp the pure ecstasy we kids were enjoying, dissuaded us of any heavenly notions in a hurry.

• • •

On impromptu tackle football games we used to play on a lawn on Grand Avenue, I forgot to mention Joseph Valerio, now living in Denver, as one of the participants. Neighbors Joe Chavez and Junior Scott also used to join us. Strange how people who attended different schools and may otherwise have had little in common somehow became buddies while playing childhood games.

• • •

Well, that oft-mentioned electronic reader board on Mills, near Robertson High School, is announcing current and coming activities. But fellas, isn’t it time to remove the notices about last Thanksgiving’s vacation?