Semi-annual purging is April ritual

Early April brings with it certain rituals of spring, seasonal milestones which serve to reassure us that, much as we might like to have it otherwise, there really is nothing new under the sun.

The University of Maine Black Bear hockey team playing in another national championship game. Last-minute income tax filings by brinksmanshippers who believe in making the Internal Revenue Service sweat for its annual pound of flesh. The promise of fiddleheads, green grass, warm days and a new baseball season. Municipal and school budgets seriously out of whack amid threats of taxpayer uprisings. Canoe races. The annual raking of the gravel off the front lawn. That sort of thing.

And, of course, the Old Dawg’s semi-annual purging of material in the file slugged “Column Possibilities That Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time.”

Among the accumulated flotsam about to get liberated from the file is a compilation of samples of unclear writing, residue from some long-ago newspaper workshop. The examples of prose gone awry allegedly were written by applicants for welfare assistance in an unidentified state. The longer I hang on to it, the more the list smells like some of the anonymous stuff off the Internet that regularly winds up in my e-mail. So out it goes. A sample of the writing: “I am very much annoyed to find that you have branded my son illiterate. This is a dirty lie, as I was married a week before he was born.”

Another victim of the purge is a note regarding the obsessive-compulsive gene that compels me to keep track of the “ya know” abominations in the speech of athletes, coaches and sports personalities being interviewed on radio or television: “March 17, 2004. Dan Patrick talk show, ESPN Radio. 96 ya-knows by Oakland Athletics pitcher Tim Hudson. Five-minute interview.”

As hard on the ear as that sorry exhibition of Newspeak was, it didn’t take the prize. Stapled to the note was another jotting from May 17, 1995 (hey, you never know when these things will come in handy). In an 11-minute interview with The Fabulous Sports Babe on Bangor’s WZON Radio, Bill Willoughby – one of the few professional basketball players then to have made the jump from high school directly to the National Basketball Association – said “ya know” 104 times. My exhaustive research on the subject shows two things. One, the average “ya know” count for heavy hitters in the standard jock interview is 43; and, two, I have far too much time on my hands.

The equal opportunity “ya-know” affliction long ago went international. I’ve heard Russian hockey players employ it, as well as Brazilian soccer stars, British rock ‘n’ rollers and Australian crocodile chasers. Odds are that Saddam Hussein his very own self will throw his fair share of “ya knows” at his American interrogators, supposing they can ever get the old coot drugged-up enough to make him talk.

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And speaking of talk that fuels the urge to reach out and choke someone, a good place to start might be with those television reporters and reporterettes who breathlessly begin every sentence with the word “now.” I don’t know if they’re taught that in broadcasting school or not, but the practice gets old early in the game, its aggravation quotient equal to that produced by people who say “anyways” rather than “anyway.”

(Yes, I realize that the dictionary insists that either is correct. But really, now. Anyone who would say “anyways” in lieu of “anyway” will almost certainly also pronounce the word “either” as though it began with a capital I, and, in any case, should not be allowed to function without adult supervision.)

Nor, come to think of it, should I, after referring last week to University of Maine assistant hockey coach Campbell Blair as “Blair Campbell.” My apologies to the man. As a much put-upon fellow traveler with an equally reversible name – one who has been addressed as “Ward Kent” probably as often as Campbell Blair has been transformed into Blair Campbell – you’d think I’d be more attuned to the pitfalls of the reversible moniker. You’d be wrong. (Where is the inadvertent comma when you need one? A comma inserted between “Blair” and “Campbell” would have at least partially saved my bacon. But no such luck.)

The misadventure brought to mind a confusing situation at one of my long-ago Army postings. My platoon leader was a sergeant named Major (Sgt. Major), and my company commander was a major named Sargent (Maj. Sargent). We longed to complete the trifecta by getting a sergeant major named Sargent. Or Major. Alas, it never happened.

NEWS columnist Kent Ward lives in Winterport. His e-mail address is olddawg@bangordailynews.net.