Read Online On the Wing by Eric Kraft - Free Book Online Page A

Martian.”
    â€œOh, folks may not think that you’re a Martian in disguise necessarily—Hopper’s Knoll may be unique in that respect—but they are apt to suspect your motives, and, once they have begun suspecting your motives, they’re pretty generally likely to decide that the safest course is to regard you as a troublemaker, at least a potential troublemaker.”
    â€œThat doesn’t seem fair.”
    â€œFair or not, that’s the way it is.”
    â€œWhat do you think I should do?”
    â€œIt helps if you agree with them. Accept what they’ve got to say.”
    â€œDon’t interrupt, you mean.”
    â€œThat would be a start.”
    â€œBut what if I’ve got something to say, too?”
    â€œBest keep it to yourself. Just nod your head and say nothing.”
    â€œI guess, but—”
    â€œI guess what I’m trying to tell you is, don’t put your foot in it.”
    â€œIn what?”
    â€œIn your mouth.”
    â€œYou know,” I said, shaking my head, “I’ve just got to say—”
    He put a strong hand on my shoulder and gave it a cautionary squeeze. “What is it that you’ve just got to say, boy?”
    â€œI’ve just got to say that you’ve really given me something to think about.”
    He narrowed his eyes, but he relaxed his grip, and I mounted Spirit and hit the road.

Chapter 6
    The New Sheboygan
    Humor … is almost never without one of its opposite moods—tenderness, tragedy, concern for man’s condition, recognition of man’s frailties, sympathy with his idealism.
    Ben Shahn, “The Gallic Laughter of André François”
    Â 
    â€™Tain’t funny, McGee.
    Molly, to Fibber
    Â 
    Ha-ha!
    Bosse-de-Nage, in Alfred Jarry’s Gestes et Opinions du Docteur Faustroll
    â€œAS I ATTEMPTED TO EXPLAIN to Spirit so many years ago,” I said, “I really do think that ‘to put one’s foot in one’s mouth,’ is generally misused. People use it to indicate that someone has made a gaffe, spoken out of turn, said what should have been left unsaid, or divulged a secret that should have been kept secret, right? Isn’t that the way you hear it used?”
    â€œYes,” she said, but she was concentrating more on highway traffic than on what I had to say, I think.
    â€œThat’s the way I hear it used, too. People say, ‘You really put your foot in your mouth,’ when they want to point out a lack of circumspection when circumspection would have been a good policy. What they really mean, I think, is something more along the lines of ‘You should have put your foot in your mouth’ or ‘I wish that you had put your foot in your mouth instead of blurting out all that stuff about Uncle Albert’s checkered past’ or ‘Why, oh why, couldn’t you have put your foot in your mouth when we got to the party and kept it there until we were safely back in the car?’”
    I waited for a response. None came.
    â€œIn the course of its history ‘put your foot in your mouth’ must have suffered a semantic shift from its original cautionary meaning of ‘shut up before you make a fool of yourself’ to ‘it’s too late now, you jerk.’ You want to know what evidence I have?”
    As before, I waited for a response. Again none came.
    â€œWell,” I announced triumphantly, “here it is: the shift forced people to come up with an alternative that better expressed the original meaning, namely, ‘put a sock in it.’”
    I allowed her another moment.
    â€œFoot, sock, they’re clearly related,” I pointed out.
    Another moment.
    â€œDon’t you agree?” I asked.
    â€œI’m sure I do, my darling,” she said, “but I haven’t really been paying close attention. The traffic is heavy, I’m playing dodgem cars here, and I’m trying to find our