Sticks and Stones May Break Your
Bones
By Chris S. Coray, the Unmuddled
Mathematician
The title of this article was the beginning of a phrase used
by my mother when I complained about some name or phrase used by an
acquaintance to offend me. It was always
followed by the companion ending, “But names will never hurt you”. Now, at age 72 I’ve decided that my mom was
just plain wrong. Some of them did hurt,
so these phrases should be avoided as they are a form of bullying but still, every
kid should expect to hear (but not like) an occasional nickname or adjective
used in a negative way. It’s almost like
part of the growing up process.
For example, during my life I have been called “Red”,
“Banana Legs”, “The Only Man in the World with Orange Eyebrows”, “Freckles”,
“Four Eyes”, “Geek”, “Nerd”, and countless others, all to my face. Heaven knows what nicknames many of my
students used behind my back.
And it hasn’t
stopped. Just last week, after driving
to Logan, picking up my lovely middle granddaughter (age 13), driving her to
SLC for an 8 hour ballet lesson, driving her home to Logan the same day, she
said to me, “Grandpa, you drive at the speed of an armadillo”. So I looked up armadillos. They are reputed to have short legs but move
quickly. So I felt better. There are several kinds of armadillos but the
picture of the one that looked the most like me was labeled as a giant
screaming hairy armadillo. I hope this
species is numerous because it is not likely that other creatures would find
them attractive.
Anyway, this article is inspired by a recently used but
seldom heard before nickname for somebody else.
It has become impossible to watch the news without hearing this
nickname. I bet that 3 weeks ago you had
never heard of but can now barely stand to learn about “El Chapo”. This is the nickname of notorious drug dealer
and killer in Mexico who recently escaped what is a joke of a prison. The talking heads fell in the love with
saying “El Chapo”. What they could not
bring themselves to say (or perhaps did not know) is that “El Chapo” is Spanish
for “Shorty”. It’s pretty hard to keep
you terrorized and worried if all you heard was a story about a guy called,
“Shorty” in Mexico. His nickname may
have been the reason he went bad, growing up with his entire town calling him
“Shorty”. Whether or not the name
calling is the reason he become really bad is not clear but what is clear is that
US news folks could not maintain what they believed was a serious story if they
kept saying “Shorty” to us. So they
didn’t. And some people are lucky. Nobody is ever going to call Nick Jarman “El
Chapo”.
To help you out with future news I am including a short list
of English words or phrases with their Spanish translations so you can practice
up and be ahead for the next empty talking head report about nefarious and
other folks around the world. Here they
are:
Jug Ears------------------------Jarra Oidos
Yellow Belly-------------------Gallina
Brainless-----------------------Insensato
Ugliest Man Alive------------Hombre Vivo Mas Feos
Muddled Male----------------Hombre Confuso or Bob
Fastest Driver in Utah-------KS or RAJ
