Oh, the memory flashes can play nasty tricks on a feeble brain such as the one that I have laid claim to over these past many years.
I'm stuck with it. There are no brain transplants in the near future. I must learn to live with limited resources and share them with you, dear diary. It is my calling.
Tuesday morning I went into a pout. I was having difficulty with my Internet access and the server. All I wanted to do was write some stories from notes I had accumulated, but the stupid 'puter wasn't letting me get on with the job.
As I pondered my way out of the problem which is a slow, methodical uninteresting adventure that you don't need to be informed about, my memory flashed back to early days on the reporting range when copy was produced by hammering away on a typewriter and each page required you to produce two carbon copies. Then I chuckled, realizing that 80 per cent of the current crop of reporters would have no idea what carbon paper and carbon copies were. In fact, I dare say, when they see the cc notation at the end of an e-mail message, they simply take that as a cue that the message is being sent along to others. They don't know that the cc denotes the old carbon copy method of sending the message to someone else and they don't care.
My recall button in the brain was still on reset, so I remembered those early days when my pouting would erupt over the fact that I couldn't get some fresh carbon paper. We had to hammer away on the old, torn and punched out carbon sheets until they were, very literally, unusable. Then we got a couple of fresh ones and we smiled until our typewriter ribbon started to wear out.
The process started all over again. We'd plead for a new ribbon. Forget about a new typewriter, that was unheard of in editorial land. Reception and circulation got the new typewriters. We got their hand-me-downs. The only pieces of equipment we received that might be new were cameras and that was only because none of the other departments used them except for advertising on occasion. Mind you, whenever those in the advertising sales department needed a photo taken of a certain object or person they were at our mercy.
I liked that part of the journalism game. I could usually hold out for a free toasted western sandwich. We call them Denver sandwiches in Western Canada. They called them toasted westerns in eastern Canada. Go figure.
So that had me thinking about old notations or references that are no longer valid, but still keep appearing on occasion like that old cc mark at the end of a message, no matter how it's sent out to other readers. And if you don't know what typewriters were, then you're beyond my assistance, please return to Facebook .
In the good old days, radio operators, especially in the military world, would respond to messages of instruction with a "Roger wilco" reply. You still might hear a few people give up that "roger" response, such as "roger that, good buddy."
So while I still don't know why the first word response was "roger" I did learn that wilco was simply a verbal shorthand for "will co-operate."
Did you know that the term "rule of thumb" came about through a reference to the size of branch that could be used for a man to beat his wife in England in the 1400s. The branch couldn't be any larger than the width of his thumb. Yikes. Thank goodness we have evolved from that stupidity a few eons ago. I know there are still some bottom feeders out there who believe that wife or partner beating is something you can do to this day, but now we have laws against that kind of stuff and we don't have to worry about the thickness of any stick.
Do you need some more not-so-useful information to carry you through another Wednesday?
Mother's Day leads the way for most phone calls in North America while Father's Day elicits the most collect calls. In other words, "I love ya Pop, but not enough to pay for this call to tell ya that."
So now have you received enough useless information to fill in the rest of your day?
If you feel the need to comment, just send me an e-mail (it's working now) with a cc to your friends. You don't have to insert the carbon paper into your computer. There are other ways of doing that now. You can catch me at: [email protected]
