4 - Friday, December 4, 1992 - North Shore News Gaining another faculty after all these years Trevor Lautens GARDEN OF BIASES ANOTHER STRANGE thing has befallen me. Fine word, befallen. Rolls nice- ly off the tongue. Apparently comes from an Old English word, with assists to Old High German and Old Saxon. Who said that reading this col- umn isn’t a learning experience? The repetition of the word “old” in the above paragraph, by the way, reminds me of my favorite Cary Grant anecdote. Stop me if you've heard it. The Cary Grant fan club was uncertain about the actor's age. So it sent him a telegram: ‘‘How old Cary Grant?”’ Grant wired back: ‘‘Old Cary Grant fine. How you?”’ You can see that I’m padding out this recitation of the strange thing that befell me. Well, | admit that it’s because it’s quite dif- ferent from the problem I wrote about last week. Loyal readers will recall that I complained at length that I'm one of those people called by his or her middie name. But this only angers the com- puterocracy, which rules the world unchallenged now that the Soviet Union has fallen apart. A number of computers have renamed me “Trevos R. Lavtens.”* This deprivation of my right to my own name doubtless struck a chord with many similarly af- flicted people, and [ expect a large volume of mail from fellow suf- - . ferers. However, my latest and vaguely allied problem — which coin- cidentally arose the day afecr I wrote that piece — is so complete- ly unique that J fear no one will read further about it, if in fact anyone is. It is easy to charm people when you tell them about their own problems. However, only a lord of the language — by which I mean someone with the genius to write the Denny’s radio commercial about the two old ladies and the elephant — can enchant readers about something that has never happened to anyone before in the history of the world. But Pll try. It requires a slow start, though. It begins with the non-unique fact that | am a graduate of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario —~ widely known as the Athens of the North. I'd explain that f got my low- grade degree only through part- time, summer, winter, and even correspondence courses (from Queen’s and UBC as well as Mac) over the astonishingly long period of 1955 to 1968. But that would only add another flea to what already threatens to be a shaggy-dog story. Anyways, in 1973 — oh, stop yawning — { moved from my apartment to a house. And some- how the Mac alumni magazine didn’t follow. A few months ago, after some 19 years, I began to miss it. The thought occurred that probably things had happened to old schoolmates that I didn’t know about. So I wrote a request to receive it. To my slight surprise, 1 got back a form. It seems that in order to get the magazine, you not only have to answer a lot of sober questions, but — this really astonished me — get the whole thing attested to by someone who swears he (or she) has known you for years. I thought I was getting a maga- zine, not a passport. Anyway, some weeks passed. -And finally ~- presumably the files of my guarantor and I having passed an RCMP security squad check — | received something in the mail from my old school. (Old English, scol; Latin, schola.) But it wasn’t the alumni maga- zine. It was a letter from the McMaster Alumni Fund, hitting me up for a donation. I must assume the fundraisers were delighted to track me down, like fresh meat for a pack of wolves. Still nothing too unusual, right? But here it comes. The letter was addressed to: “*Mr. Trevor Lautens, Faculty of Social Sciences, 5445 Marine Drive, West Vancou---"" 8,000 CATS & DOGS ARE DESTROYED EVERY YEAR IN GREATER VANCOUVER LET’S STOP THE KILLING! SPAT al NEUTER YOUR PETS > make a Donation ‘and tor information please contact: NORTH SHORE HUMANE SOCIETY 448 Eost Kings Road. Non Vancouver V7N 1HS 8 6282 ~ A Registered Charitable Organization — Tax Receipts Available Hold it, hold it! What in hell is *‘Faculty of Social Sciences’’ doing in there? Forgive the profanity. But, to coin a phrase, | rubbed my eyes in disbelief. There is a Faculty of Social Sciences at 5445 Marine Dr. in West Vancouver? And I'm a member of it? Me, with my lousy second-rate degree? OK then, wise guys, how come I'm not getting a much bigger sal- ary and five months off a year? Too astounded to think with my accustomed clarity, it briefly oc- curred to me that in order to pick up some pin money my wife was running a clandestine private uni- versity in, maybe, the sewing room. There is so much junk there that it would be easy to hide a whole university, let alone 2 mere Faculty of Social Sciences, in a comer of the room. But I dismissed that specula- don. If there were a university in the house, it would have to have graduation ceremonies. And 1’d be sure to notice them, because our three children would be cer- iain to disrupi them. They disrupt everything else. They'd at least want to try on the mortar-boards, and would probably run around screaming during the valedictory address. So I rejected that theory. A further puzzlement was that my third-rate degree — i flattered it earlier by calling it ‘‘second- rate’? — was in English and histo- ry, not social sciences. At last the explanation hit me like an ICBC rate increase. I had simply been too modest to think of it. Here it is: Doubtless a Mac grad in these parts is a devoted reader of my columns and had sent them back to a friend who is an academic at the old school. The academic was utterly astonished by the lucidity, the range, and the profundity of my social thought, with its keen observations on the virtues of restoring the poor houses, bringing back the noose for Open bread-stealers, abolishing the in- come tax, and crushing socialist institutions like the post office — and returning to a pastoral life in which simple folk would sit around their cottages churning butter by hand and patting their dogs. Presumably the amazed aca- demic turned over my columns to McMaster’s own social sciences, faculty, which, equally thunderstruck by the breadth and depth of my recommendations for the improvement of the common weal, concluded that this could not possibly be the work of a single hand, but of a whole facul- ty of philosophers laboring without respite in the vincyards of thought. The Mac academics then whispered these speculations to the alumni staff. Which, convinc- ed and properly impressed, there- LOVE YOUR NAILS Flecthe curable, no more sppiting. low maintenance, thin EUROPEAN ‘FACIAL Using only the finest, purest ingredients upon decided that my shyness was commendable but inappropriate, and that the world should know that there is a Faculty of Social Sciences residing at 5445 Marine | Dr. Is there any other logical expla- nation? Class dismissed. Harrumph. But before you go: I'm deeply ashamed that, in last Sunday’s News, I gave such a fatuous and pompous reply to Inquiring Reporter A.P, McCredie’s ques- . tion: **What do you see as the aim of your column?”’ I'm mortified that A.P. quoted me all too accurately. I should have answered: ‘*To convert readers to my views.”” Sure, that reeks of pomposity too. But it’s frank pemp. $3.4° 53 499 Other Services: Silk or sculptured nails, ame treatments, waxing, lash tinting, make-up, pedicure & manicure Chez Elfe estnerics 922-1225 1369 Marine Dr., West Vancouver aa | ! 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