An exchange, ongoing for years, has caused me to run for the dictionaries, all because of a single word: assassinate.<\/p>\n
Bruce Wertz, a clerk for the Las Vegas City Schools, has assured me he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s still alive by giving me an unusual answer as to his health. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll ask, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153How you doing, Bruce?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Invariably, he replies, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m OK. I haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t been assassinated this week.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Then he tacks this on: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153And if I had been, I wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be telling you about it now.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Really?<\/p>\n
Let me digress:<\/p>\n
I had a friend who once asked me, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Are you on the wagon?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Well, yes and no. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s like asking, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Have you stopped beating your wife? Give a simple yes or no, please.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Some questions can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be answered that way. Regarding being on the wagon, I found a couple of versions, which might or mightn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t 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.<\/p>\n
Another, also referring to a pledge created by various 19th century temperance groups, describes an imbiber\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s promise to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153drink only from the water wagon,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d which was commonly seen around town, to moisten the dusty roads.<\/p>\n
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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d had a beer during the \u00c2\u00a0Super Bowl, asked my status, well, I couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t say yes or no.<\/p>\n
To say \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Yes, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m on the wagon\u00e2\u20ac\u009d implies I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve sworn off liquor. To say no suggests somehow I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve fallen off and resumed liquor-laden ways.<\/p>\n
Now let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s return to the assassination. Without trying to put down my friend Bruce, I posit it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 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?<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Where do we draw the line on who is or isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t assassinable? As for Bruce Wertz, I believe he doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have a thing to worry about. Nor do I.<\/p>\n
It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 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 \u00e2\u20ac\u0153member of the nizari branch of the Ismaili Muslins at the time of the Crusades, 11th through 13th centuries.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
These assassins were renowned as militant fanatics, reputed to have used hashish before going on murderous missions.<\/p>\n
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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 lives.<\/p>\n
Finally, Bruce\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s reply: that he has not been assassinated, is good news, but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s really akin to asking someone if he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 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).<\/p>\n
So, he entered the darkened barracks and asked, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Is everybody asleep?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Yes,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d replied the greenest recruit in the unit. Well, that reply cost us several extra pushups during physical training the next morning.<\/p>\n
Some day, that private will get his. But no, it won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be an assassination.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2<\/p>\n
A recent column on games we used to play drew a bit of feedback. Harry Leippe said I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d 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.<\/p>\n
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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t need fancy balls, skip ropes, jacks, bats or gloves. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Just give me a pile of dirt and I was happy.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
April has the right idea. And that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s my notion of childhood fun. Once, when a truck backed up to our \u00e2\u20ac\u0153casita\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to deposit a load of coal, my sister Bingy, my brother Severino and I thought we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d gone to heaven as we jumped onto the piles of coal, beslubbering one another\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s faces with the soot.<\/p>\n
Of course, Mom, failing to grasp the pure ecstasy we kids were enjoying, dissuaded us of any heavenly notions in a hurry.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2<\/p>\n
Well, that oft-mentioned electronic reader board on Mills, near Robertson High School, is announcing current and coming activities. But fellas, isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t it time to remove the notices about last Thanksgiving\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s vacation?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s still alive by giving me an unusual answer as to his health. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll ask, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153How you doing, Bruce?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Invariably, he replies, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"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\/703"}],"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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=703"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":704,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703\/revisions\/704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}