Another Basque Adventure©

     Many columns ago we introduced Blair Timert, a young man who had been orphaned as a baby and adopted by parents who were Basques. Those are the people who live in a land between France and Spain.  We heard from Blair the other day.

          You couldn’t pronounce Blair’s parents’ name correctly in English no matter how you tried.  Realizing that fact, Blair’s parents retained his birth name, but Blair grew up speaking Basque.

          In the earlier story Blair had been in Chicago to pick up a bundle of expired bonds.  He was going to take them to his income tax preparer.  Two Basque hoodlums saw him coming out of the bank with what appeared to be a bundle of valuable documents.

          “Tigo hari kargatuta dago.” (That guy is loaded)

          “Ongil armzen dezagun oilasko hari.” (Let’s pluck that chicken).

          The hoods grabbed Blair and hustled him into the back seat.

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          “Gidatu.”

          Blair yelled at the hoods in perfect Basque: “What took you so long,” pretending to go along with the hoods.

          One of the hoods froze, but the driver kept his head.

          “Eruman itazu buruzagia hauek narusiari.”   “Drop me at the next café.”  Blair pushed the bundle to the guy in the front seat who wasn’t driving.

          The driver pulled up to the next restaurant he saw.

          Blair got out without another word and the hoods drove off.  They delivered the worthless bonds to their boss who realized immediately that they’d been duped.  He reported the problem to his boss who sent someone to “take care of the problem.”

          The hoods, sensing they were in trouble, fled and ended up in Letongaloosa where one of them had a cousin who worked at a local bank.  They came to town in separate cars and talked in Basque on their cell phones.  The local police were monitoring the airwaves and picked up the conversation.  They couldn’t understand it, but one officer thought it sounded like Basque.  The police called Blair.

          Blair recognized immediately that it was his erstwhile countrymen.

          “They’re planning to rob the Letongaloosa State Bank,” he told the police.

          The authorities set a trap for the hoods and scooped them up when they entered the bank.  The hoods ratted out their colleague who worked at the bank, and they were all tried, convicted, and sent to prison.

          Blair found the worthless bonds in their car and took them to his tax preparer who worked his magic and got Blair a big tax refund.

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          Coming out of the tax preparer’s office, Blair asked himself. “What should I do with this money?” 

          He bumped into (literally) Dean Ima Farseer,” chair of the Department of Et. Al., Et. Al.” at Letongaloosa Community Junior College.

          Blair and Dean Ima had worked together on city boards of directors. 

          “Pardon me,” said Dean Ima.

          “My fault,” said Blair. “I wasn’t watching where I was going.”

          “Ima, you look concerned,” 

          “We have a problem,” said Dean Ima.  “Our accountant under withheld taxes on employee salaries.  Now we owe the Internal Revenue Service a bundle.”

          “How much do you owe? I just might be able to help,” said Blair.  “The IRS owed me a big refund.  Let’s find out how I can make a charitable contribution that won’t require further taxes for LCJC.”

          “Bless you,” said Dean Ima.

          They took the problem to an accounting firm that specialized in helping people keep their money rather than “contributing” it to the IRS.

          The accountants worked their magic, and LCJC came out owing zero in additional taxes.

          Afterward Blair said, “I’ll buy you a drink.”  They went into a café.

          “Make it a root beer,” said Dean Ima.  “I’m still on duty.”

        “I’ll drink to that,” said Blair as they sat down at the counter. “Make that two root beers, please.” 

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Love Talk ©

 

About a year ago I wrote a column titled, “I Speak Alien.” In that column I told how my friend from outer space, the alien KB-11.2, had saved my engagement and my marriage by teaching me Mujerspeak, the native language of my bride-to-be Emmaline.

Recently my alien friend surged to the rescue again. This time Kaybe helped a colleague ofmine. Dr. Morris Amaraduckski is a professor at Letongaloosa Community Junior College where I teach. Morrie’s teaching and research field is polychromatic einsprechen. Scores of LCJC students have become linguistically nimble after taking Dr. Amaraduckski’s course, “Theory and Practice of Tergiversation, Circumlocution and Equivocation.”

All his life Morrie had been too busy for romantic distractions. He was a focused individual.

He sailed through high school, college and graduate school with topnotch grades by keeping his eyes on a computer screen, and the seat of his pants on a chair at the library. After hereceived his Ph.D., and came to teach at LCJC, Morrie focused on getting tenure. He taught his classes vigorously, and he published prodigiously. For a number of years after he gained tenure,

Morrie just focused on being focused.

Then one day, WHAM, Morrie fell in love. The object of his affection was Sally Beeglesdorf-Hannraty, wife of the late George Henry Hannraty, DDS. Sally moved to Letongaloosa to run aflower and gift shop after the untimely demise of her husband. Sally and her spouse had lived foryears on the East Coast where people talk loud and straight, and have funny accents.

When Sally moved to Letongaloosa she talked loud and straight and had a funny accent.

She caused culture shock among the locals who, as a general rule, speak quietly and bea around the bush a good deal. Sally’s social life was straitened and her flower and gift shop’sbusiness suffered as a result. But Sally was intelligent. She soon realized that Letongaloosa was not the East Coast, and that Letongaloosans weren’t going to adapt to her. She decided to adapt to Letongaloosa.

Sally enrolled in an elocution class at LCJC, and well before the semester ended she hadlost her East Coast accent, toned down her loud voice, and learned to put “at” on the end ofher sentences—as in “That’s a nice dress, where did you buy it at?”

There remained one serious problem. Sally still talked straight. She always called a spade a spade. Sally felt that speaking honestly was a matter of moral integrity, not a matter of accent orvoice level. She refused to compromise when it came to expressing her honest opinion. As aresult, the newly accent-free, soft spoken Sally remained in straitened social circumstances,running a business that attracted all too few customers.

It was the first day of classes for Spring semester. As usual, Morrie had a full roster of students enrolled in his popular course, “Theory and Practice of Tergiversation, Circumlocution and Equivocation.” One of those enrolled was Sally Beeglesdorf-Hannraty. Morrie had his back to the class and was writing on the chalkboard when Sally walked in and took a seat at the front of the room. Morrie turned around, and their eyes met. A jolt passed through them both. It was love atfirst sight.

A flustered Morrie jibbered and jabbered for the first few minutes of the class. Then he pulled himself together and called the roll. Then he fixed his gaze on a spot on the wall at the back of the room, and began to deliver the lecture. Sally found that she could keep from fidgeting and sighing loudly by tuning out Morrie’s voice, and staring fixedly at the blue lines on a page of a spiral notebook that lay open on her desk. She didn’t take a single note. The students, understandably, were bored. It was a painful fifty minutes for everyone.

Finally, to everyone’s relief, the electronic sheep bell that signals the change of classes at LCJC, clanged . The students streamed out. Behind the lecturn, Morrie was uncharacteristicallytongue tied. Sally sat demurely and uncharacteristically silent.

 

“Ms. Beeglesdorf-Hannraty…” Morrie began.

“ Sally,” said Sally, interrupting him.

“And I would be gratified, indeed, warmly appreciative, if you would address me simply as Morrie. That is the sobriquet by which I am known to my nearest and dearest friends,” said Morrie.

“Right,” said Sally.

“If you have no other pressing engagement, my dear Sally, may I induce you toaccompany me to the cafeteria for some light refreshment and a bit of conversation?”

“Sure,” said Sally.

Though they spent two hours sitting across from each other at a small table, neither of them could remember, later, what they had talked about. But somehow they knew that they were going to be part of each other’s lives from then on.

The next time they saw each other was at the second meeting of the class. Morrie wasfeeling ebullient and articulate. He was braced by the thought of seeing Sally again. Sally had spent all morning having her hair done. When she walked into the classroom she was breathlessly excited to see Morrie again.

The class had barely begun when the scales fell from their eyes.

Morrie began his lecture with a brilliant, if somewhat circuitous, explication of euphemisms as a conversational deflection technique. On the chalkboard he diagramed Wallburner’s Euphemistic Deflection Model, and recommended it to the class as a powerful linguistic tool for conversationally disarming friend and foe alike.

“With Wallburner’s Model,” said Morrie, “you can express your opinion articulately andpowerfully, and at the same time prevent your conversational opponent from taking offense.

When you use Wallburner’s Model, you never have to say you’re sorry.”

“What a bunch of crap!”

The words sliced through the air like a laser. There was a collective intake of breath. Morrie’s face froze, his mouth ajar. Dozing students’ eyes popped open. People sat up straight and looked around the classroom, trying to identify the speaker. The voice had been as quiet and well modulated as the words had been crude and combative.

“I beg your pardon,” said Morrie, gazing at Sally.

“I said that’s a bunch of crap,” said Sally. “Euphemistic deflection my hind leg. Where at did you get such baloney at?” she asked in the same quiet, well modulated tone she’d used in the first outburst.

All of a sudden Morrie and Sally were going at each other in what can best be described asa dogfight between a feisty rat terrier and an aloof, purebred afghan hound. Morrie’s eloquentcompound-complex multi-syllabic sentences in defense of euphemisms and decorouscircumlocutions soared with erudition. Sally flamed back with rapid fire four-word zingers andgraphic, monosyllabic epithets. It was a highly stimulating exchange for the students, but it was a very, very grim business for the two combatants.

That night my alien friend KB-11.2 entered the picture. Kaybe, as you’ll recall, looks like agiant tuna fish can. Erector Set™ arms sprout from the curving sides of his body, and three spindly metal legs drop down from the underside of his flat, stainless steel torso.

Decades ago Kaybe taught me Mujerspeak. Today my fluency in that language is a key to my happy home life. Apparently Kaybe is still assigned to do good works in this quadrant of the galaxy, because he beamed himself down to the den where Morrie sat brooding darkly over the romantic train wreck he’d just been through.

Kaybe’s assignment was a tough one, and he carried it out beautifully. He taught Morrie to speak a direct, straight to the point language called Ritefrumdashoulder, and he taught Sally to speak an easygoing, loose-limbed language called Goinroundabarn.

I was invited to their wedding a few weeks later. Toward the end of the ceremony, the minister asked the bride and bridegroom the “do you” question.

Sally replied, “My response is absolutely, indubitably, unquestioningly, totally, andecstatically in the affirmative.”

Morrie said, “Yep.”

Dr. Larry day is a retired J-School professor turned humor writer. His book, Day Dreaming: Tales From the Fourth Dementia is available for purchase via his website: http://www.daydreaming.co