Drawing a Blank on Marriage Vow
As a student, I was often such a nuisance that I now feel guilty that so many teachers have contributed funny items to this column. But at least I’ve stopped interrupting them. The latest missive comes from Milt Timmons of Van Nuys, who recalled:
“I was giving college freshmen a fill-in-the-blanks-type vocabulary test, and one of the questions asked for an eight-letter word, beginning with ‘m’ and ending with ‘y,’ which means a system of marriage to only one spouse at a time.
“Most students either correctly answered ‘monogamy’ or left the question blank. One student, however, answered with ‘monotony.’ ”
Timmons added: “I had to give him full credit.”
SPEAKING OF CONFINEMENT: While motoring through San Diego, I noticed a sign on the outside of a downtown jail, near a bank of windows, that informed passersby that “communicating with prisoners without authorization” was a misdemeanor. Guess the jailers have a problem with drive-by communications.
And John Mayer of North Hollywood came upon a sign that seemed to warn against attempted escapes from another facility--the Rancho Park Golf Course in West L.A. Mayer adds that when he left he heeded the sign’s notice and did indeed “exercise appropriate caution.” (see photos)
A SPLIT PERSONALITY: Al Wallis of Hollywood overheard a woman at a lunch counter marveling about a show she had seen in Las Vegas with “amazing magic tricks and even white tigers.” Her companion asked, “What was the name of the show?” The first woman answered, “Sigmund and Freud.”
ANGELENOS ABROAD: A reader’s experience of failing to understand a London hotel owner’s offer of “Ardinry Toast” (ordinary toast) moved Lee Lunday-Butner of Pasadena to relate her own “embarrassing” episode in the same city.
On a tour of the Natural History Museum, she realized that she was missing her handbag. After a search, she and her husband went to Lost and Found. There, a security guard “began scolding me aggressively.”
“Seems I had left my purse on a bench in the foyer. This forced them, in that bomb-conscious country, to immediately evacuate the area. They had been calling me over the P.A. system but with all the noise (and our rattled state of mind) we never heard them. Friends tell me I’m lucky they didn’t blow the purse up. I got it back none the worse for wear and I learned a big lesson about doing stupid things like leaving it lying haplessly around in foyers.”
CHOOSE YOUR WEAPONS: Mark Dusbabek of La Quinta was in a Whittier restaurant where he was “being pestered by a very aggressive fly.” Finally, he hailed a passing employee and asked for a fly swatter.
A few moments later, the employee returned, not with a fly swatter, but with . . . ice water.
Maybe the worker thought that drowning the fly would be more humane.
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This is a day I really miss Bill Keene, KNX radio’s retired traffic/weather reporter, because each Halloween he would give the temperatures in such scary places as Hacienda Frights, Aghoula, Ghosta Mesa, Elvira Monte, Bell Goblins, Woodland Chills, Spookamonga, Santa Scarita, West Munster and, of course, Hollyweird.
Steve Harvey can be reached by phone at (213) 237-7083, by fax at (213) 237-4712, by e-mail at steve.harvey@latimes.com and by mail at Metro, L.A. Times, Times Mirror Square, L.A. 90053.