THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, January 6, 1995 TAG: 9501060029
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: JENNIFER DZIURA
LENGTH: Medium: 65 lines
OCCASIONALLY, some wayward reader confuses me with Smitha and Jonathan, or Joynes and Bieber, or Ann Landers and Dear Abby. I'm not quite certain how one comes to make such a mistake, as each of the above is plural and I'm not, but nevertheless, these readers have the curious habit of throwing questions at me that I wouldn't touch with someone else's prosthetic arm.
Between the questions about suspected STDs and how to keep busy in juvenile detention centers, however, I can sometimes extract a query with a moderate semblance to column fodder. I have thus dedicated this column to providing dubious words of wisdom for the wayward souls in question.
Joyce, a 60-year-old grandmother, called my Infoline number with the following complaint: ``Why do young teenagers today lack courtesy and respect toward their elders? I write my grandchildren, send them cards, send them money for Christmas or on their birthdays. I send stamps and ask them to please write. None of them ever write or acknowledge anything. Is there any way I can change this? What can I say to these children?''
My immediate reaction to Joyce's problem was something like ``Duh. Tell the little brats you're making budget cuts and send them each a roll of dimes on their birthdays.''
But now that I've had time to contemplate the question, I've changed my position. I think nickels would be more appropriate. After all, it's cretins like these grandchildren who make decent, regularly bathing, productive individuals between the ages of 13 and 19 look bad. I bet these jerks talk with their mouths full of food, too.
I mean, how hard is it to write a thank-you note? It's not like anyone is expecting anything original or creative. One can merely scribble something like ``Dear . . . , Thank you for the . . . . I like it a lot. Hope to see you soon.'' If one wishes to get particularly personal, one might modify ``Hope to see you soon'' by adding ``in Portsmouth'' or ``in Tanzania.'' The whole process requires a negligible amount of time and is just one of those things that distinguishes the kind of people who swallow before speaking and don't make U-turns across flower-bedecked medians from the kind of people who shoot pizza delivery men when they get bored with kicking the cat around.
Gerri Ashe, a junior at Hertford County High School in North Carolina, wrote with the following question: ``How did you acquire such a large vocabulary?''
My answer to this is that I read an unabridged dictionary page by page. This pursuit took a few years and worsened my prescription considerably, but it was worth it. I now am able to use such words as ``saponaceous'' (of or like soap) and ``umbiliform'' (shaped as a navel). It was kind of a bummer in the beginning, though, because the new words I was learning began exclusively with the letter ``A,'' causing me to compose sentences such as ``It is with ardent aplomb that I attest to the apocryphalness of the aforementioned assertion.'' Once I finished the F and G sections, however, people were less apt to notice this oddity.
My final advice is to scrutinize the most massive unabridged dictionary you can find. Be certain, however, that you do it all in one sitting and in dim lighting, otherwise you won't remember any of it. MEMO: Jennifer Dziura is a junior at Cox High School. Her column appears
bimonthly. If you'd like to comment on her column, call INFOLINE at
640-5555 and enter category 6778 or write to her at 4565 Virginia Beach
Blvd., Virginia Beach, Va. 23462. by CNB