A guy in one of my classes.

Professor Penwose, Kiwi

The captain of the football team is in my class. He’s from the Ozark Mountains of Tennessee. I call him Lil Abner. He told his mother. She put in her store-bought teeth and complained to the university. I was called to the Dean’s office.

“We have a complaint that you are calling Clem Cladiddlebopper, Lil Abner as a derogatory statement because he’s a hillbilly which is also a derogatory statement. Is that true ?”

No,No,No…I call him Lil because he’s big, that’s called an Antiphrasis, which usually is intended to produce an ironic or humorous effect.
I call him Abner, after Abner Doubleday.

The Dean thought he knew that one, “Isn’t he the guy that discovered chewing gum?”

Chewing gum? No, not Doublemint, Doubleday, the guy that invented baseball.

“Oh!”

That was a close call. I have to be careful in the Deans office. Every time there’s a minor insurrection in my class they threaten to tenure me which is technically a life sentence with those nitwits.

I went back to class and told Clem I call him Abner after Abner Doubleday.

“Ain’t that the guy who makes chewing tobacco?”

Chewing tobacco? I have no idea who you’re thinking of? He’s the guy that invented baseball.”

“But I play football?”

Are not all sports the same?

”Oh no, sports are all different. A long time ago Sears and Roebucks sent us a net by mistake. We’re too far up in the mountains to fish, so we used it for volleyball. That’s all the sports I know about.”

But you play football?

“Heck, you don’t need no brains for football.”

Well, being named after Abner Doubleday is an honor.

“Really?”

Sure! The Hall of Fame named a two base hit after him…but it sounded stupid, “I just got a Doubleday,” so they dropped the day off the end of it.

“That sounds better.”

That’s right! So quit telling on me to your mother.

“She’ll be happy. She hates to put her teeth in.”

Penwose Out,
By George
NoPo8