IT'S - Chapter 9

"Trophies, Imposters, Posters, and a Serial Comma"
- (Bob Kusnetz)

It was barely forty minutes into the long, twelve-hour flight (hyphenated flights were always long) from Frankfurt to Dallas as the 767 droned silently toward the European coast.

Alan looked worried. Was it possible for an airplane -- or anything, for that matter -- to drone silently? Was this an oxymoron? A paradox? A contradiction? A problem? Besides, why was the plane silent, droning or not?

Alan turned to look out the window at the engines. Well, OK, the one on his side of the plane. As he turned he felt a sharp pain in his ears. Aha! He had put on those annoying earphones (or, as they were not electronic but merely tubes, should they be "airphones"?), but the music had yet to be turned on. He removed the 'phones and was at once relieved and afrighted (that was more than concerned (one syllable more), but less than frightened (one letter less)). He was relieved, because the plane now droned normally, rather than silently, and was afrighted as he thought of the 'phones. Earphones he could deal with; what were "'phones"? Were they abbreviated telephones? Were they unisidedly contracted earphones? Thinking of the apostrophe worried him. After all, the apostrophe was what was sending Alan home. Well, not home, exactly, but back to the U.S. "At least the 's' in '"phones' is far away from the apostrophe," he thought, very confused about the quote or quotation marks. He looked out the window, trying not to think about all of the bizarre happenings of the last six weeks.

They were approaching the coast. Alan wondered which coast it might be. Was it the Atlantic coast? Was it the European coast? Could it be both even if it was only a single coast? Alan's head hurt. Not only did he not feel like pondering coast singularities or duplicities ("duplicities"?), but there it was -- another apostrophe, this time followed directly by that damnable "s".

Alan looked down, rather than ahead. He saw a large, flat expanse of land with an unusual shape in the middle. It looked like an upside down, reflective ultra-menorah -- a many-branched candelabra. Alan realized that the city below and just south of him was Amsterdam, its many canals reflecting the mid day sun. Alan wondered if there really was a mid day. Was is really "mid-day"? Was it "midday"? Was it popular enough yet to be "miday"? Alan hoped for one of the latter two. He didn't like hyphens much more than apostrophes. After all, they were simply different orientations of the same thing, and what's ninety degrees between friends? Alan looked back toward Amsterdam.

"Can Al canal?" Al verbed. He frowned again. He had been in Amsterdam only six weeks before, near the beginning of this trip, and that's (there was the combination again) where the trouble had started. Alan had gone to visit some friends in the area, and over the many beers they had, they had discussed, among other topics, corporate verbing. Can Al canal? What does it mean to canal? What does it mean to solution or to calendar, for that matter? Why do people want to invent new words when they have perfectly good ones already? Do rhetorical questions end with periods or question marks?

Come to think of it, they had already discussed "already". Was it "already", or should it be "all ready". What of "alright" and "all right". Did it matter what side of some pond you lived on? Did it matter if you were from the north or the south or both or neither? Would Esperanto ever really catch on?

Alan's (not again!) headache was getting worse. He looked south from the canals and saw a smaller city. "That must be Amstelveen", he thought. Amstelveen was the legal center of The Netherlands (should the "T" in "The" be capitalized? Isn't the "T" in "The" already or all ready capitalized? Should you capitalize the "t" in "the" to make it "The"? Should capitalized punishment be abolished?). At any rate, if Amstelveen was not Truly the legal center of The Netherlands, it was, at least, the place where Jurries (that was the Dutch (Netherish?) spelling) were recruited.

South of Amstelveen was Uithoorn, pronounced like an openly gay trumpet. Uithoorn was famous worldwide for its (Alan shuddered as he left out the apostrophe this time) empty messages. "How can messages be empty?" mused Alan. "Even if a message is empty, isn't (well, at least there was no "s" this time) that a message in itself? Silence speaks louder than words. I wonder WHOSAID that?"

"You did, you blithering idiot," chided the man in the aisle seat. "Why are you talking to yourself?"

Alan felt silly. "I'm sorry. It's (aiee!) been a rough year and a long trip, and I guess I was thinking out loud."

"Well, it's (aiee!) annoying," said Aisle, "I do wish you'd stop."

"I'll try," said Alan. "By the way, why did you say 'aiee!' a moment ago?"

"I was trying to make you feel better. You said it just before. I thought it was the way you spoke."

Alan looked puzzled as his neighbor continued, "Actually, I was making fun of you. I'm like that. Why did you say it?"

Alan sighed. Did he really want to get into this? He thought for a moment and decided to see if his neighbor wanted to talk, after all. Alan wasn't too keen on opening the subject, but thought he had better or else this would be an awfully short chapter.

"I'll be glad to tell you about 'aiee' and my mumbling if you really want to hear it," said Alan. "Do you want to talk?"

"Let me see what movie they're playing," replied Aisle. "Oh, blast. It's (aiee!, right?) 'Treasure of the Sierra Madre'. I've seen it before. I guess we don't need no steenking movies, let's talk."

Alan recognized the run on (run-on? runon?) sentence, but, to be nice, pretended he had heard a semicolon instead of a comma.

"My name's Alan," said Alan, extending his hand. As this was extremely painful, he contracted his hand and extended his arm, at the end of which remained his hand.

"And I'm Andrew -- Andrew Warden," replied Aisle, or Andrew, for that was, indeed, his name. "What line are you in?"

"I think they're called rows, and we're in row 10," joked Alan. "But seriously, Folk, I teach computer operating systems. And yourself?" he finished reflexively.

"I'm in dry cleaning, specifically getting fuzz balls out of sweaters."

"Aha, so you're a nit picker!"

Andrew ignored this lame attempt at humor (or as he always said, "humour") and decided to change the subject. "I can tell from your accent that you're probably an American, right?"

"Well, that's pretty broad. Do you mean North American or South American?"

Andrew almost regretted his decision to talk. "I would guess you're what we over here call a USian."

"I like the way you pronounced that bicapitalized word," complimented Alan.

"We UKers, or Englishmen, as you lot say, can't let you USians have all the fun. Where in the States are you from?" Andrew wondered if he should have ended his question with a preposition. Was Alan's preoccupation with words contagious? He (that is, Andrew, not Alan, even though Alan, sitting by the window, was the nearest referent) decided to be an arrant pedant, like Churchill, and let the question stand, form notwithstanding.

"I'm not always sure," replied Alan. "I'm on the road so much that I sometimes think I have no home."

"So, to where are you headed?" asked Andrew for variety. "Were you in Europe on business?"

"No, I was here on vacation, if you can believe that. I'm on the road most of the year, so for vacation I keep travelling. Makes sense, huh? Maybe I'm just trying to avoid having to straighten up my house."

"If you're not going home--."

"I'm going to meet a friend," Alan interrupted. "Actually, I hope he's there. I've been trying to call him, but he keeps getting hired and laid off and rehired every few weeks, so I haven't been able to get in touch with him."

Alan, of course, knew that the friend he had just mentioned was Danny, but he didn't mention Danny's name, because he (this still refers to Alan -- please keep up) knew that Andrew didn't know Danny from a hole in the ground. Of course, if Andrew were ever to see Danny and a hole in the ground at the same time, he (Andrew, this time) would almost certainly be able to differentiate between the two. Nonetheless, (please feel free to sprinkle the preparenthetical word with spaces or not according to taste) Andrew could not possibly know Danny; after all, there was the age difference. Danny has been around for several chapters, Andrew merely a few paragraphs.

"Do you work together?" queried Andrew straightly.

"Sorta," elided Alan. "We worked for the same company once upon a time, but that's not why I'm going to see him. We went to school together years ago and were members of a small club. We all had the same, very strict, English teacher: Miss Thistlebottom. She would know, without question, whether she should have been preceded by a colon in the last sentence. At any rate, we knew that some day we might all meet again for another battle; for the last six weeks I've had a feeling the time has come. I'm heading to Boulder to meet my friend and find out if Miss Thistlebottom has returned. If she has, this might be war. In fact, it would be a new, rad war," Alan concluded Valleyically.

"New, rad? Wander! End war! Redawn!" Andrew Warden warned anagrammatically. "Why do you think there will be trouble? What did she do to you in the first place?"

Alan sighed again.

"If you keep this up, you'll steam up the windows," chided Andrew.

"I'm sorry," replied Alan. "I'll tell you what happened. Miss Thistlebottom was very strict about our use of language. If we said or wrote anything incorrectly, we would get our knuckles rapped. I did fairly well in all but one area. I had trouble with my apostrophes, especially when followed by an "s". I thought I had finally learned, but these last six weeks have made me think about the problem again and wonder if Miss T is back."

"Have you been misusing apostrophes since you've been here?" questioned Andrew.

"No, not really, but I've seen them horribly abused by the Europeans. Now, I know most of the people here are E>_ONE_lers," Alan pronounced carefully, "and I don't expect them to always use perfect English (or American), but there have been some other, unusual clues that it was time for me to head to Boulder. It all started near the beginning of the trip. . . ."

Alan began his tale of the trip, explaining to Andrew why it was that he (Alan, of course), was headed toward . . . well, he'd rather not think about what lay ahead.

. . . One of Alan's first stops had been to see his friend Giovanni. Arriving at Giovanni's villa, Alan had been met by Giovanni's mother.

"Hllo, Ln; I m hpy to si yu agin," struggled the kindly woman valiantly.

"And I'm happy to see you again, too" enunciated Alan slowly. "Your English is much better than the last time I was here. Your words are very good. Your consonants are good, too. I just got a good book that I think will help you with your pronunciation, though. I will send it to you. It is called 'Lex Lax' and it will help you to move your vowels."

"Thnk yu vry much," smiled Giovanni's mother, "I wll tll Giovanni tht yu r her."

A few moments later, Giovanni came bounding down the stairs. "Hallo, Alan, mya good friend. It'sa nice to see you, yes?"

Alan did not even notice Giovanni's correct use of the apostrophe there; he (Alan, still -- pay attention!) was not yet sensitized. That would come very shortly.

"And it's good to be back here," Alan smiled. "How is everything?"

"Allsa justa GRAND!" ebuliated Giovanni. "Comma inside, yes?"

Alan went inside and commented on Giovanni's sports wall. "My, you have won a lot more trophies since (not 'because', he thought silently) the last time I was here. What did you win that big one for?"

"Oh," said Giovanni. "It'sa not mine, it'sa my father's."

"Your father's?"

"It'sa Pa's trophy, yes?"

It was then that Alan felt the chill run down his spine, the first of many such chills he would feel over the next few weeks. Had it been all the apostrophes he and Giovanni had used, or was it that last, sinister statement, and what it foretold?

Alan had enjoyed the remainder of his visit with Giovanni and had gone to see another friend in one of the loveliest cities in Europe, Praha. Praha? Why did English provincialists take a nice, simple name like "Praha" and bastardize it into "Prague"? True, some names are hard to translate or transliterate or transmogrify, wherever that came from, but "Praha"? It is to laugh. Rather than laugh, Alan's story continued.

He had stopped in Praha (he was both a pedant and an exactalist) to see Ilona, a lovely young woman who had started her own business in the new, burgeoning capitalist environment in Czechoslovakia.

"How's business, Ilona?"

"It is going quite well. I am selling disguises."

Alan was puzzled. "Disguises? Do you mean costumes?"

"No," corrected Ilona, "Disguises. My father used to work for the government. He would sell disguises to communist spies. We also would hire imposters if we couldn't get a good disguise."

"How did you ever get started in that business?" asked Alan.

"It was my grandfather," explained Ilona. "After World War II there were a lot of Germans living here. The communists forced most out, but some wanted to stay. My grandfather looked like our neighbor, Gunter Hesse. He pretended to be Hesse, and told the communists that he was here before the war. With other disguises, he let some other Germans stay here."

"And that started the business?"

"Yes. He would charge a fee. I still remember when he went next door and asked Gunter for money. He said, 'I want my imposter fee, Hesse!'."

That was the second time a chill had run down Alan's back. He was starting to see a pattern. He didn't really want to think about what this might portend, so he enjoyed the remainder of his visit with Ilona and continued on. Interestingly, he enjoyed the remainder of this visit just as much as the remainder of his visit with Giovanni. It was two equal remainders. Same difference.

After spending a week with the pests in filthy Budapest, Alan had taken the train back across the continent and spent a week with friends in Duntocher, a wee way west of Glasgow.

"Wasn't that nicely alliterative?" asked Alan of Andrew. "My friend is a member of the Greater Glasgow Alliteration Alliance and Assonance Association." Without waiting for words in response, he told the tantalizing tales of the Scottish woods (or, in the spirit of this paragraph, the Glaswegian groves).

Alan had met Tom and his saintly wife years before; Tom and Alan were fairly fine, fast friends (hey; you don't want to quit cold turkey, do you?). Tom was a politically active sort, but he did have a penchant for selecting odd causes, as his current endeavor, trying to free his favorite actress, Sharon Gless, from her current, television-restrictive contract, so that she could expand her talents, proved. Alan wondered if Andrew would catch commatitis from that last sentence, but he (Alan, Dummy!) pressed on.

"What are you doing, Tom?" quizzed Alan.

"Hrmph. Oim just making up these posters," Tom McGrumped in his Scottish-Irish accent. "Moy friends were supposed to help me but they have not come."

"Why, you sloy dog," jested Alan, making fun of Tom's accent. "Do you think you'll succeed this time?"

"Oim sure of it!" replied Tom emphatically. "No one could possibly ignore my poster: FREE GLESS!"

Spinal chill! Normally this would have been too much of a stretch even for Alan, but after the other strange happenings of the trip, and with the end of the chapter approaching, the chill was there, stronger than the others.

"There were other times, too, that I thought I heard Miss Thistlebottom calling 'apostrophe S' to me. Why, when I was in Antwerp," Alan continued as he turned to Andrew. . .  .

Andrew was snoring silently (it was Alan who had been droning aloud). Alan turned back front (a neat trick to be sure), reclined his seat, and thought of what lay ahead. In a few hours he would be in Dallas; from there it was a short flight to Denver and a short drive to Boulder. He hoped Danny was still there. He (you do know which he, do you not?) wondered if Danny had any information on Miss Thistlebottom. Had she returned? Did "Pa's trophies", "imposter fees", and "poster frees" portend the worst?

As he pondered the possibilities, a lovely long-haired lass walked by and said, mischievously, "You really should put your seat up. Your posture, see. . . ."

"Aieeeee!" Alan didn't hear the rest of her warning. He needed no warning. He was sure that Miss T lay ahead.

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Off The Wall - Callahan's Saloon