Several months ago, there was an ad on TV for a large grocery store chain. The premise was that there was a great variety of produce to be discovered at their store. The ad showed a little boy asking his father the names of fruits and vegetables. "What's this?" asks the boy. "A peach," answers his father. "What's this?" asks the kid. "Broccoli," says his father. At the end of the ad, the kid points to a large, green bunch of leaves and asks, "What's this?" The dad is stumped.
Watching the ad, I yell out "Swiss chard, you fool!"
Well, the pigeons of smugness have come home to roost. My son asks the names of the most difficult things. What is the name of the space between the nose and lip? I answered "the upper lip, moustache area". Wholly unsatisfactory. And the bottom of an apple, that little crinkly area? What is that called? I have no idea. And what about the space between the cheek and the ear? Chear? And that mini-tractor thing that swoops along dusty sidewalks, sucking up trash in its vacuum hose, what's that called? A golf-cart speedball?
My sense of the articulate has been badly shaken.
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