\u00e2\u20ac\u0153You look tired. Maybe you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been working too hard.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I worked like a dog today,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d my mother would respond. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t you see how nice the house looks and how frazzled I look?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
‘If we were in the business of creating mixed metaphors, this would be a world-class effort. The dialogue isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t made up. I heard it often during my childhood in the days when women stayed home cooking and cleaning and men sailed to the saline mines.<\/p>\n
My recently deceased Aunt Manuelita Lucero, who owned a car long before we did, often visited our home while the older children were in school. Mom and T\u00c3\u00ada would lament about housework, and thereby found reasons to invoke the names of various animals with which to compare themselves.<\/p>\n
Whereas I have always respected the work ethic of both my mother and my aunt \u00e2\u20ac\u201d in fact the work ethic of most women \u00e2\u20ac\u201d my concern here is not with the condition of houses but in their choice of words.<\/p>\n
I was 5, not yet in school when I began hearing the animal allusions as a gauge to how hard they toiled. Mom\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s expression, sure to be unleashed when Dad arrived from work, was \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I worked like a pig all day.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d My T\u00c3\u00ada\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s animal of choice was a dog.<\/p>\n
Even at the time, as the youngest child, I questioned their choice of menagerie reps. I wondered, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Is it possible that T\u00c3\u00ada\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s work was so intense that she soon felt like a big canine, curled up in the living room and copped a few zees?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
And in Mom\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s case, was her porcine description of her work totally accurate? Could she have meant that her chores at our house on Railroad Avenue broke her down to the point where she envied the porkers?<\/p>\n
Before I grew wiser and learned never to question adults\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 word choices, I asked them exactly what they meant. I wanted to know how the dog\/pig references related to housework. You see, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s possible to work like a Trojan or even a horse or a mule. But when was the last time you saw a pig laying bricks or a dog trying to teach high school freshmen?<\/p>\n
But to cover my bases here, let me emphasize that whatever I said was due to curiosity, not sarcasm or bear-baiting. I wanted to know more about that dog-pig-work equation.<\/p>\n
So I joined the conversation. But I emphasize that we Trujillo children were not, under any circumstances, allowed to interrupt grownups. Trying to find an opening between their accounts of heavy lifting, scrubbing, sweeping and cooking, I unwittingly became drawn into the discussion. Mom said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Why even Mannie (my nickname) can tell you how hard I work.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I soon regretted my participation.<\/p>\n
In smarty-pants fashion, I said something like, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Ya know, I went outside and saw some neighbor dogs digging holes, dragging a telephone pole to the hole, then wiring it and replacing the dirt before putting up several guy wires.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
That pronouncement brought glares my way. It was a while before they realized that my exaggerating the matter wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t helpful. If, without being asked to, I had recited variations on my own distortions, that might have produced a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153que cute!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d response. But since the animal work reference was directed at Mom and T\u00c3\u00ada, I realized I was in trouble.<\/p>\n
Remember, none of us had ever seen dogs or porkies working on a project. True, dogs bury bones and pigs create deeper mud holes, but work \u00e2\u20ac\u201d in the sense of planning, progress and purpose \u00e2\u20ac\u201d isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t their bailiwick.<\/p>\n
Anyone who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s read Aesop\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Fables knows of many tales punctuated with animals. Geese and foxes are particularly prominent. And notice how we provide adjectives like \u00e2\u20ac\u0153sly\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to foxes and ascribe other animal characteristics to people.<\/p>\n
Who wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t like to be strong as an ox, busy as a bee, gentle as a lamb, curious as a cat, or have the eyesight of a hawk?<\/p>\n
Well, I was chided for my insolence that day. The irony is that as I mentioned these mythical animals building massive Interstate projects, I kept imagining how clever my siblings would think I was for coming up with the imaginary utility pole project.<\/p>\n
I wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t the one to trumpet out my brilliance when my older siblings arrived from school. Nooo, that was Mom\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s job, who made it clear I had been out of line. And then, she emphasized the news by warning that they \u00c2\u00ad\u00e2\u20ac\u201d the older brother and sisters \u00e2\u20ac\u201d ought never try what I did.
\nI\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m convinced the rest of the family heeded Mom\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s words.<\/p>\n
And, at least for the rest of their lives, I worked like a dog never again to be impudent in my relatives\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 presence.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2
\nThose blasted auto-correct features on computers and cell phones! In my world, I use lots of deliberate misspellings. I prefer to express gratitude with the word \u00e2\u20ac\u0153thanx\u00e2\u20ac\u009d rather than the other, more common spelling. However, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a chance that my rendering of that word will be corrected as this column makes its way to print.
\nAnother advantage of being an overly creative speller is being able to tell others the typos were deliberate.
\nYes, I hear there are ways to disable the auto-correct feature, but I haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t learned how. But what about human fact-checkers and auto-correctors. A few Optic readers never let a factual error go unpunished. Routinely I hear from Chad Boliek, John Geffroy, Richard Lindeborg and my sister, Dorothy Maestas, who tell me I should have used \u00e2\u20ac\u0153circumference\u00e2\u20ac\u009d instead of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153diameter.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d In a recent column. Or that I miscalculated \u00e2\u20ac\u0153pi.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d
\nI now realize my recent \u00e2\u20ac\u0153pi-making\u00e2\u20ac\u009d treatise went awry when I wrote about something called \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Pi Day.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d
\nBut as long as we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re on that subject, I now have a question for you:
\nWe know about some of the knights of the Round Table, such as Sir Lancelot, Sir Galahad and Sir Bors.
\nCan anyone identify the most obese knight? And why he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s so named?
\nHint: It is neither Sir Spamalot nor Sir Lunchalot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153You look tired. Maybe you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been working too hard.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I worked like a dog today,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d my mother would respond. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t you see how nice the house looks and how frazzled I look?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d ‘If we were in the business of creating mixed metaphors, this would be a world-class effort. The dialogue isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t made up. I heard […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1352"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1352"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1352\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1353,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1352\/revisions\/1353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}