2003 Soap Box Archives

Names 12/05/03

Now y'all please don’t get me wrong. I have the utmost respect for Mr. William Shakespeare. I hear he was a fair to middlin’ actor and he certainly had a way with the English language. After all, here it is hundreds of years after Mr. Shakespeare’s demise and people still go around quoting him and he came up with some downright fine sayings too.

He is the one who is credited with saying that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet and I expect that he’s right about the smelling part but it’s really hard to imagine a rose by some other name.

What if a rose had been called a rat socket or a carbuncle,
would you feel the same way about sending a dozen red blivets
to your girlfriend on her birthday?

I think names have a lot to do with how we feel about certain things. Memories of the Old West conjure up names like Dodge City, Cheyenne, Durango, Waco and Fort Worth. Would we feel the same about our Old West lore had it occurred in Pleasantville or Sun City?

And there’s all the good old cowboy names like Hank and Monty
and Shorty and Slim and Dusty and Rusty. They sound real western, don’t they? What if they’d been named Chauncey or Montel or Fauntleroy?

Would you trust your money to an institution called Billy Bob’s Bank or Skippy’s Savings and Loan? How about Lucky’s Public Accounting Firm or Fat Boy’s Funeral Home? Or how about having lunch at the First National Pizza Parlor or The Metropolitan Seafood Restaurant?

What if our sports teams were called the Dallas Druids, the Philadelphia Philanthropists, the Tampa Bay Tutus and the Tennessee Titmouse? Makes you cringe, doesn’t it?

Would you check into Joe and Tony’s Hospital for an appendectomy or have a root canal at Chuck E. Cheese’s Dental Clinic? How about
having reconstructive surgery done at Plastic R Us?

Would you fly with Risky Business Airlines or sail on a ship called The Rusty Tub?

Can you imagine the Mighty Mississippi being called the Afton or the Danube. Naw man, it’s the Big Muddy and those names just don’t fit. Mississippi is a proper name for the biggest river in the country and anything else would sound wimpy.

So while Mr. Shakespeare is right about the name a rose is called not changing the smell, I think it sure would change the way we look at things. After all, you can call it the barnyard or the cattle abode, but it still smells the same.

Pray for our troops.

What do you think?

God Bless America

Charlie Daniels

 

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