If Words Could Talk

Mumbo Jumbo

A lot of things sound like "mumbo jumbo" to me, like how to perfect a golf swing so it’s perfect. I’ve never been able to understand why we stop adding "and a half" to our age. Somewhere in the murky land of the teens—or for sure as we teeter on the edge of 21—we drop the urge to be older by a half.

It’s a shame that youth comes at such an early age. Take a sigh of regret at no charge and imagine what you’d look like in really baggy pants.

Listen up class! We’re entering the land of word origin. Keep your skepticism inside at all times and wait for the column to end before snoozing.

The editor get sacks of mail asking me to shed some light on why we say the things we do—and what are we really saying? Oddly enough, that’s exactly what he asked me as I gave him this column.

Why just last week, he got an e-mail wanting to know what was all the mumbo jumbo about gas prices breaking double digits because the Gas Princes were peeved that HBO has a new show scheduled called "Sex in a Turban" or was it "Sex with a Turban" followed by "I Dream of Camels."

So, my infinite intuition directed me to look at familiar phrases with insights that can’t be easily verified so I can say just about anything I want.

"Mambo jambo" was a cool African greeting that meant "Good day" before the Australians latched onto it. Actually, when the Australians say "Good Day, Mate" they mean, "I’m surprised to see you today since we live down under where anything that moves is poisonous and/or wants to eat you." I guess it’s possible that the Africans could identify with that, too.

It was a British explorer—weren’t they all?—who muttered the phrase into "mumbo jumbo" as he sank in an elephant patty with a very stiff upper lip.

The Australians also were responsible for "willy-nilly," which started as bush slang for a very big wind, like a hurricane.

The Australians had mixed feelings about the bad weather. The bad was their hair could get wet; the good was it got rid of a lot of the creepy things with big teeth.

Please don’t send me to Australia barefoot; I’ll "spill the beans." That little jewel has an interesting history intertwined with espionage, direct mail, smuggling and the invention of accountants.

The story goes this way: in a very hot Middle Eastern land far away where beans grew profusely, they decided to trade them for something they really needed like big blocks of ice.

Since these guys didn’t have paper, they wrote secret messages on cylindrical clay pellets. They hid these teeny-tiny messages in bags of beans.

Don’t get too far ahead of me. It seems that a few of these messages had to do with affairs of state and solutions for the really big problem they had with the gooey black stuff that their camels walked through.

Yes, the agricultural border patrols finally wised up and started forcing folks with beanbags to dump them on the ground for inspection. I wonder out loud if anyone had to count the beans. But, that’s another bushel and a peck, isn’t it?

Hey, we’ve got just enough time left for one more. Raise your hand. Yes, sir, let me repeat that, "What’s the history behind ‘basket case’?"

Well, it seems the Romans were appalled that certain German tribes’ favorite form of capital punishment was to tie a person up inside a large wicker basket and hang it over a big fire.

The Romans didn’t much fancy barbecue—they preferred something more sophisticated, like crucifixion.

So, historians report, when the Roman judges would hand over a criminal to the locals to punish, they were called—voilà—"basket cases."

Further extensive research confirmed that there’s not one modicum of truth to the vicious rumor that’s circulated for centuries that the loving French kept seriously affected asylum inmates in surplus German baskets rather than lice ridden beds.

No, no, no, I’m happy to put this disgraceful hearsay to rest—they were kept in boxes.

The French scribbled messages on the inmates disguised as tattoos and smuggled them to Australia before FedEx caught on and opened every box labeled "French Nuts."

Class dismissed.