Opinions

“What’s the name of the place again?” Sabra requested as she looked up from her plate of ratatouille. I pronounced her dish as “ratatatatouille,” something I tend to do when I find the original word funny.
Other words I like to butcher include quesadilla (quasidillios), hors d’oeuvre (horse dervies) and the Nebraskan town of Ogallala (ooogalalala).
We were at the Blue Bird Diner in downtown Iowa City; eating and talking about the play we were about to see at the Riverside Theatre.

Agatha Christie wrote a murder mystery titled “Halloween Party” in which a young girl is drowned in a tub of water used for the game of bobbing for apples. The challenge is to catch an apple floating in water without using your hands. I found it nearly impossible to sink my teeth into a floating apple, as it requires a bit of pressure to bite into the apple’s skin, and the apple tends to skitter away unless you can manage to corral it against the side of the tub. The game tends to be a rather soggy affair for all participants and is death on crepe paper costumes and face-painting.

Throughout most of the month of October, we see pumpkins on porches, witches on broomsticks and ghosts in the shrubbery. We dress in frightening costumes, hide our faces with masks, and beg for treats from neighbors and total strangers. Why do we do it?

Before I get into this subject any further, I want to say I’m not denying Sesame Street is a wonderful program. It helps kids learn, not just one, two, three and A, B, C, but a lot of other important stuff, as well; things like tolerance, diversity, acceptance, cooperation, patriotism, honesty, and a few dozen other valuable things. I’m simply wondering if there shouldn’t also be room for silliness, fantasy and just plain fun.

With all the things going on in this world of ours, I can’t believe that our news-gatherers find it necessary to report the same events several times in a day– sometimes even several times during one half-hour newscast. I turn on the evening news which reports a half-hour of local, national and world news, followed by a half-hour of national and world news from one of the big networks, and then another half-hour from the local station. During those 90 minutes, I am told about the “biggest” stories a minimum of three times, but often, eight or nine times.