Trying Not to Be Hysterical

I don’t believe I have ever been hysterical.

I do recall having come close to hysteria once when my wife, in her ninth month of pregnancy, awakened me at 3 in the morning to say that she thought her water had broken.

Since nothing is ever very clear to me at 3 a.m., my first response was to wonder vaguely whether we ought to call a plumber. When I did suddenly realize what was going on, I exploded.

I mean, I leaped out of bed like a toy on a spring and landed on the dog, who was asleep next to the bed and thought the devil himself had come to take him to doggy hell.

He began howling and barking and running around in terror, which increased my panic to a state of, well, semi-hysteria, having to do directly with a womb--my wife’s womb, of course.

She remained in complete control of her faculties during all of this, and we managed to get to a hospital all right, where my son was born under normal circumstances, despite the trauma of his final incubation.

I mention hysteria today only because every feminist in town is breathing fire over an incident in the O.J. Simpson trial in which defense attorney Johnnie Cochran accused prosecutor Marcia Clark of being “hysterical.”

In the eyes of the fire-breathers, it was tantamount to patting her on the behind and saying, “Now, now, dear, don’t get excited.”

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Use of the word hysteria immediately brought charges of sexism, augmented by some busybody who called Judge Lance Ito to point out that the word is derived from the Greek word hysterikos , “of the womb.”

Ito, who was busy at the time throwing another juror down the elevator shaft, reasoned in haste that yes, it was a sexist term and Cochran ought to be reprimanded. Clark would have preferred a harsher response, but calling names is not a crime punishable by death in California.

Feminist Gloria Allred, who can rise to a towering rage at the drop of a bonnet, appeared on television to condemn every sexist, chauvinistic, male pig who ever walked the earth, and that means you, buster.

It was an intimidating appearance, because the camera zoomed in on her face and it seemed for a terrifying moment that she might jump out of the tube and into my living room, where I lay sprawled on the couch in my underwear.

“It would serve you right if she did,” my wife said, “because you’re a disgrace and a bum. Did you shower today?”

I notice every time there’s a situation in the news involving a feminist issue, Cinelli gets p.o.’d at me, though I don’t know why. “That’s the trouble,” she has often said, “you don’t know why. If you knew why, you wouldn’t be lying there in your shorts scratching yourself.”

I would if I itched.

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I looked up the word hysterical and found that it also means “causing unrestrained laughter.” The dictionary offers as an example of its usage, “Oh, that joke is hysterical!”

I don’t believe that’s what Cochran meant in reference to Clark’s behavior, since she wasn’t saying anything funny at the time, but it does serve to indicate how words can take on several meanings.

For instance, not too many months ago Clark accused all of the Simpson defense attorneys of “hypocritical ramblings” for their comments made to the media at the start of the trial.

I looked up the word hypocrite. It also has a Greek derivation, hypokrites, meaning an actor. Rambling, of course, indicates a lack of direction, so that when you put the two words together, you end up accusing a person of being Kevin Costner. Now that’s an insult.

Had someone telephoned Judge Ito to point that out to him, I’m sure Clark would have been reprimanded and ordered to apologize to all of those lawyers on Simpson’s payroll. Costner is no match for any of them when it comes to acting.

Meanwhile, the word hysterical will continue to have a multiplicity of meanings. According to our in-house computer, we have used it 2,082 times in the past 10 years in stories ranging from restaurant reviews (“There’s this hysterical place called Red Lion in Silver Lake”) to international politics (“It would be hysterical for Israel to accept the Hamas dictate as its own law”) without anyone charging sexism.

I would urge everyone to stay calm about the issue, but the word calm comes from the Greek kauma, meaning “burning heat,” and a city full of people in burning heat is not what I have in mind. Unless, of course, you’re lying on the couch in your underwear and keeping cool.