Tony Deyal | Foot in mouth, coming and going

A closed mouth gathers no feet. An open mouth can get you a ‘Foot In Mouth Award’ like the former chairman of the England cricket team, Ted Dexter. Actually, he was the first to get the Plain English Campaign for a “baffling comment by a public figure”. As the senior person in the Marleybone Cricket Club (MCC), he tried to explain why England lost a game by saying, “Maybe we are in the wrong sign. Maybe Venus is in the wrong juxtaposition with someone else. I don’t know.” The winner in 1998 was Parlimentarian Rhodri Morgan. When asked if he would like to be leader of the Welsh Assembly, he replied, “Does a one-legged duck swim in circles?”

In the Caribbean, one-legged ducks don’t ever last as long as even a half-circle. It’s food for thought. Just like Naomi Campbell, the English supermodel, who picked up the award in 2006 for gushing, “I love England, especially the food. There’s nothing I like more than a lovely bowl of pasta.” Unfortunately, the origin was way “pasta” her knowledge, since it started in China and then settled for good in Italy since 800 AD. However, I cannot end without following suit or, better yet ‘soot’, with Donald Trump.

In 2016 when Trump was campaigning for the 2016 US presidential election, he was “unrivalled” as the winner of any ‘Plain English Campaign’ then, now or ever. He started on the Mexican immigrants the same way he is now going after the Haitians with, “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” Then he added, “And some, I assume, are good people.” That did not stop him from demanding that they get their ‘ass-ume’ back to Mexico. He went after former Navy Officer, Senator John McCain, by claiming, “He’s not a war hero. He was a war hero before he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.” I hope that, unlike the Senator, Trump is not just captured but jailed.

‘SHOW’ HORSE

In some ways, Trump is very much like the Ig Noble Prizes, except he is very much unlike them. He is a ‘show’ horse and not a ‘sure’ prize. He might make you laugh but will never make you think about anything but him. In fact, there are some of the prize winners who, like Trump, will never ever stop you from laughing. For example, the president of Belarus in Eastern Europe won a prize for making it illegal to applaud in public. He did the same with the country’s State Police for arresting a one-armed man for applauding. Two psychology experts were awarded for finding out that ‘leaning to the left makes the Eiffel Tower seem smaller’. When it came to literature, writers like me can’t beat the US Government Accountability Office. They issued a report about reports about reports that recommends the preparation of a report about the report about reports about reports. Another group, on the eastern shore of North-east Europe in the appropriate ‘Baltic’ Sea, got a Peace prize for demonstrating that the problem of illegally parked luxury cars can be solved by running them over a tank. In reading about it, I first thought that the organisation had spelt “Peace” incorrectly. The final two for this column were the biologists who discovered that fleas which live on dogs jump higher than fleas that live on cats, and vets from the UK who found that cows with names give more milk than cows that are nameless. Given their success with their work, I have to kowtow to them and all the others.

But not for long. As B.B. King said, “The beautiful thing about learning is nobody can take it away from you.” Despite the possibility of being swamped by millions of feet in my mouth, I like the idea of finding questions that make me think and then laugh. In fact, the louder the better, like, “Do pilots take crash courses?” Or, if a pig loses its voice, is it disgruntled? If money doesn’t grow on trees, then why do banks have branches? One that I heard from my mother when she tried to wake my father after a night of drinking was, “You forget you had to go to work this morning. You sleep like a baby!” And I, a baby at that time, knew that I only sleep for two hours before waking up and shouting for “Mummy” or the equivalent of “breast, breast”. There are some questions that make us think but not really go any further, “How can you tell when you run out of invisible ink? What happens if you get scared half to death twice? Why does ‘slow down’ and ‘slow up’ mean the same thing? Why is it called ‘lipstick’ if you can still move your lips? And why is it that night falls but day breaks?

DON’T JUMP

This is my I recommend that you don’t jump at the first answer you think about in questions like the following. What’s a thing that you can find in a man’s pants but not in a woman’s pockets. Next, what’s a four-letter word that ends in “k” and means the same as intercourse? Talk (and sometimes more talk). This is one for the books. What is hairy on the outside and soft and wet on the inside? It starts with the letter “C” and ends with “T”? Coconut. Very similar in the question but not the answer is, “Arnold Schwarzenegger has a big one. Donald Trump has a small one. And Madonna doesn’t have one at all. What is it?” Last name. Here’s a baddie. I go in hard but come out soft, and I never mind if you want to blow me. What am I? Chewing gum. For men in the night, here’s one. What goes up, lets out load, and then goes back? Not daddy. It’s just an elevator. For the youngsters in the back of the car, here’s one for them. What gets longer if pulled, fits snuggly between breasts, slides neatly into a hole, chokes people when used incorrectly, and works really well when jerked? Not just a belt, but a seatbelt.

Unfortunately, these are easy compared with the really important ones, like “What happens after death? Is there a God, and, if so, what is the nature of God? What is the origin of the universe? Do aliens exist except in the cinema or TV? How did lie originate on Earth?” The one I heard at a school in Canada when the teacher asked the class, “What is dark matter?” They all looked at me and laughed.

Tony Deyal stayed far from games with friends who asked, “Where is your favourite place to kiss someone?” and “Have you used handcuffs before?” Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com