The Write Way

8 June 2007

Trailer Trash OR Neither a Borrower Nor a Lender Be ...

Greetings,

We have a little old trailer that we use for carting our garden rubbish to the local council tip, which is about 5 km from home. As I said, it's an old trailer that has seen better days, but it's happy doing local trips and carting the odd fridge or box or two when the need arises. What it's not built for these days is high speeds on the open road ... But I'm getting ahead of our story ... Let's start at the beginning ...

We have an acquaintance who, when she spotted our trailer while visiting one day, got a gleam in her eye she usually reserves for pizzas and cream cakes, and sure enough, a week after this visit, the phone rang and it was Pizza Woman asking if she could borrow the trailer.

What can you say? She'd seen it sitting there, we weren't using it, so, "Sure," says I, "that's fine. How long will you need it?"

"Oh, just for the weekend," says she.

Two weeks later, we were still waiting for the return of our trailer. It eventually turned up, just parked on the verge one weekday morning. It turned out she'd broken the railing along one side and had to get it re-welded, hence the delay.

A month or two later, she rang again with the same request; she was moving into another house and needed to move some extra boxes. Again, we waited and waited and finally had to ring her after more than two weeks to get our trailer back. She'd have it back next weekend, she promised.

The weekend came and went with no sign of the trailer ... Another phone call, and the next morning she turned up with it. As she was unhooking it, the Love of My Life did the gentlemanly thing and went to help her. I heard her say, "You'll have to get that spare tyre fixed before I borrow it again!" Then she thrust a bottle of wine in his hand, leapt into her car and vanished in a puff of exhaust fumes.

And when we moved the trailer we knew why! See for yourself. 

As we learnt later, she'd taken our little around-the-town-slow-driving trailer out onto the highway, fully-laden, to move her daughter to a place about 100 km from us. Her 18-year-old son was driving and he lost control, the trailer turned over and they ripped the tyre to shreds. They used the spare and continued on their journey, then brought the trailer back to us with the unrepaired tyre as the spare!

She even had the gall to turn up a week later (after we'd replaced both the ruined tyre and spare with new ones) to borrow it again. We said no ... We might be slow learners, but even the most patient of persons eventually get pushed too far.

I don't need to tell you that this woman is now one of our very few ex-acquaintances. Putting it mildly, she's cooked her goose with us and will now have to pay $30 a half-day to hire a trailer the next time she wants to use one!

I think old Polonius gave his boy, Laertes, good advice when he said: 

Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry

Really, when I stop and think about it, the whole speech contains good advice; if you haven't read it for a while, take a moment or two to re-acquaint yourself and perhaps pass it on to your own heirs.  

There's an etiquette to borrowing, isn't there? We humans have our little rituals and unwritten laws that govern most of our social activities, and you ignore them at your peril. 

In 2003, the BBC conducted a survey of readers to unearth some modern irritants and how etiquette rules could help smooth the way. They have some admirable suggestions for shop assistants, library users and that bane of the modern world ... mobile phone users.

Pity the librarians who wrote in with this account of poor behaviour: 

"We've had to create policies about things that should be taken for granted. No, you can't ride your scooter inside the building. No, you can't eat pizza and drink beer while you use library public access computers. Yes, you have to wear a shirt and shoes. No, you can't wear a thong bikini inside the library even if it is 100° outside. No, you can't have sex in the stacks. Yes, you do have to return the books you borrow. No, you can't play your boom-box at full volume on the library steps. No, you can't skate inside the building. No, you can't use the public restrooms to bathe and do your laundry. No, you can't leave your pre-school children for us to babysit while you go do your shopping. No, you can't change your baby's diaper on the circulation counter. And we have actually had to create a rule forbidding people from bringing their motorcycles into the building. We already had one that dealt with bicycles."  

I don't know about you, but this sort of mobile use really irritates me, too:

"Think of a person standing in line at the supermarket. Before s/he gets to the cash register, they may talk away ad infinitum. Once they get to the register, however, it's time to say 'Look, I'll call you back in a minute,' and hang up. Remember that the person standing behind the cash register is just that - a person, and should be treated as such." (Source) 

Hear! Hear!

On the subject of etiquette -- or lack thereof -- here's a situation that can also drive peaceful persons to ponder some passionate persuasion ... people who drop by unannounced just as you're about to sit down to dinner ... or lunch ... or sometimes even breakfast. Remember we came across the perfect word for this a few weeks ago  ... it's giomlaireachd!

No wonder the Germans also came up with a word to use for people who annoy them ... It's Backpfeifengesicht - that translates as, "a face that cries out for a fist in it."

Ian Lipke (one of our Merry Band) sent along these wonderful neologisms from the Washington Post Style Invitational:

Bozone (n): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future

Hipatitis (n): Terminal coolness

Karmageddon (n): It’s like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it’s like, a serious bummer

Bet you'll find an opportunity to apply a couple of these over the weekend!

This week's Little Something Extra presents one of Etiquette's classics; take the time to read it and weep at the passage of time.

And a story about good manners ...

The Master of the house is comfortably installed in an armchair in the library, reading a newspaper.

Suddenly, John, his butler rips the door open and shouts, "Sir, the Thames is flooding the streets!"

The Master looks up calmly from the newspaper and says, "John, please. I have already told you before, if you do have something important to tell me, first knock on the door, then enter and inform me, in a quiet and civilised manner, about the issue. Now please, do so."

John apologises and closes the door behind him. Three seconds later, the Master hears a knock on the door.

"Yes?"

John partially enters the room and with a gesture one would make when welcoming and ushering in somebody and with water flowing over his shoes, he announces, "Sir, the Thames."

This week's quiz:

Try matching up these words with their meanings:

pusillanimous, sinecure, ennui, animadversion, encomium, quiddity, exigency, fractious, quondam, defenestrate

1. having been formerly; former; sometime; person dismissed or ejected from a position 

2. a formal expression of praise 

3. stubbornly resistant to authority or control; unpredictably difficult in operation; likely to be troublesome 

4. the essence or nature of a thing    

5. lacking in courage and manly strength and resolution; contemptibly fearful; cowardly 

6. an office or position that involves little work or responsibility 

7. to throw out of a window 

8. harsh criticism or disapproval 

9. a pressing or urgent situation; a sudden unforeseen crisis (usually involving danger) that requires immediate action 

10. a feeling of weariness and dissatisfaction arising from lack of interest; boredom; the feeling of being bored by something tedious 

OK ... this doesn't really relate at all to what we've been nattering about, but I couldn't resist ...

"Several dentists decided to set up a new practice. Since they were competing against a number of established practices, they needed something unique. Eventually, they decided to set up their offices on a boat. At first they left the boat tied to the bank of the river. But soon they decided to offer river crossings while they performed dental exams. Their business became quite popular and was referred to as the Tooth Ferry."

Last week's quiz:

See how many of these phobias you have:

mysophobia, dendrophobia, herpetophobia, amaxophobia, trypanophobia, glossophobia, equinophobia, genuphobia, ophidiophobia, tonitrophobia

1. fear of knees - GENUPHOBIA (Makes you wonder how people discover they have a fear of some things, doesn't it?)

2. a morbid fear of dirt or contamination - MYSOPHOBIA  

3. fear of trees - DENDROPHOBIA (The question must be asked ... Why?)

4. fear of horses - EQUINOPHOBIA (How could anyone be afraid of anything that has those lovely, big, brown eyes? Awwww)

5. fear of injections - TRYPANOPHOBIA (Aren't all small children sufferers of this?)

6. fear of reptiles - HERPETOPHOBIA (This is something our late, lamented Crocodile Hunter never suffered from)

7. fear of thunder - TONITROPHOBIA

8. fear of riding in cars - AMAXOPHOBIA (Not driving in cars, just riding in them ... and I have a couple of acquaintances who bring out my latent amaxophobia whenever I can't think of an excuse to avoid being a passenger!)

9. fear of snakes - OPHIDIOPHOBIA

10. fear of public speaking - GLOSSOPHOBIA

I often trawl this for comments to post on my site ... so if you say something about the newsletter or site, be warned, you may end up being read by one of the 2,000+ unique visitors who visit Write101 every day! Make your Mark on the World. Then stop by our Map of the World and read the messages. (Just click List) and add your mark.

A Little Something Extra

We chatted about etiquette earlier, so what better way to finish than with the classic rules of etiquette by Emily Post. You may find this a bit of a shock, when you see just how much times have changed ...

'People who ridicule etiquette as a mass of trivial and arbitrary conventions, “extremely troublesome to those who practise them and insupportable to everybody else,” seem to forget the long, slow progress of social intercourse in the upward climb of man from the primeval state. Conventions were established from the first to regulate the rights of the individual and the tribe. They were and are the rules of the game of life and must be followed if we would 'play the game.''

Read the complete Etiquette in Society, in Business, in Politics and at Home here. 

Word of the week: Drachenfutter - literally translates as "dragon fodder," but refers to the peace offerings made by guilty husbands to their wives.

What a useful word this is!

Oxymoron of the week: I'm sure you've come across this notice at some time in your reading: "This page intentionally left blank"

Which begs the question: Why?

And here's a Latin phrase we can use to calm ourselves over the late return of some borrowed item:

Potius sero quam numquam 

[poh-TEE-oos SAY-roh KWAHM NOOM-kwahm]

It is better to be late than never.