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Highlands Today

Over Prepared But Rain Was Needed

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By Raleigh Whiteman | Highlands Today

Published: August 29, 2008

Perhaps there are many others who did just as we should have this past weekend and early days of the week in getting ready for what could have been a hurricane. I took down and put away anything that could have become a projectile and basically cleaned up my back yard, which was in great need of being cleaned up. But just as we are a bit angry at the work we put into getting ready for what turned out to be not much more than some rather heavy rain showers, we are just as thankful for all the rain Tropical Storm Fay dumped onto our lawns and lakes.

I am considering myself a bit crazy in trying to work on this column, knowing that at any minute the power will go out and I will lose all the work and have to start all over again, so I will save this now. Left, click, save. It looks to me that Lake Placid and Sebring will see the center of the storm go very close to us. Then wouldn't you know it? The cable went down just when the center was approaching.

The last time I saw my rain gauge before it was blown over and broken we had more than three inches of rain, that must have been when my boat's bimini top got ripped to shreds.

Our weather forecasters certainly have a very complicated job in trying to guess what the weather will be. Another group of professionals are teachers of the English language to those adults who are eager to learn our vocabulary. There are just too many things that we say that just doesn't make sense.

Ever Wonder Why?

There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat.

Quicksand works slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig. And why is it that writers write, but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth beeth? One goose, two geese.

So one moose, two meese?

If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it? Is it an odd, or an end?

If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital?

We ship by truck and send cargo by ship and we have noses that run and feet that smell.

How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites?

You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out, and in which, an alarm goes off by going on.

English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all. That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible.

Finally why doesn't Buick rhyme with quick?

Raleigh Whiteman, of Lake Placid, is a contributing writer to Highlands Today. You can reach him on the Internet at rwwhiteman@comcast.net

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