Smiley Anders for July 7, 2009

• By SMILEY ANDERS
• Advocate columnist
• Published: Jul 7, 2009 - Page: 1B

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Glenn Hardin, of McKinney, Texas, offers an example of how the meaning of words can change over the years:

“My daughter Allison lives in Springhill, Tenn., and home-schools her two daughters, 11 and 6.

“My son-in-law decided the girls needed some exposure to classical writings, so he  was reading Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Raven’ to them.

“When he reached the ‘rap, rap, rapping on my chamber door’ part, both girls jumped up and started ‘beat boxing.’

“Yes, I had to ask — it’s ‘chi chi boom, chi chi boom.’ ”

Geezerhood revisited

After I confessed to trying to change my TV channel with an electric toothbrush, I heard from others about adventures in geezerhood.

One colleague told of a lady he knows who entered a McDonald’s drive-through and shouted her order.

She became frustrated when there was no response, then realized she was addressing a trash receptacle. 

Doug Johnson has found that “a cell phone won’t change the channels, either.”

And the reverse is true — a  lady pulled out her cell phone and tried to use it, until she found it was her TV remote.  

But Simon Kwan offers me words of encouragement:

“With today’s technology, you never know what an electric toothbrush can do — just like an iPhone. You are just ahead of your time.”