Don't Laugh—if You Can Help It
SOME howlers come from the child’s inability to grasp the meaning of figurative language. Thus " Julius Caesar was renowned for his great strength -he threw a bridge across the Rhine." But more commonly it is just that the word confronting the child is strange and unfamiliar. and the onlv course
to take is to allow the imagination free rein and rely on appearances, The meaning of the word has not been properly understood or the child may never have seen the word at all, and by a natural association of ideas the child interprets it in the light of some other word of similar shape, sound or form. As good as any is the statement that a
sinister person is a woman who hasn’t married. A zebra, according to one little fellow, is a sort of cream-coloured donkey with black stripes, from which they make stove polish, Biology is the science of purchasing. Spaghetti is what they throw about at weddings. Barbarians are things put into bicycles. to make them run more smoothly. Immortality is when one man runs away with another man’s wife. Indeed a high degree of intelligence is shown by some of the answers where the solution is the joint product of guess work and deduction, If you had no idea of the meaning of the phrase "a grass widow," could you offer any explanation of its meaning? Could you, for example, do any better than the girl who said that a grass widow was the wife of a dead vegetarian, or than the one who said it was a snake without a father? What is a Minister of War-to young children who know no _ politics? One lad ventured to answer that he was the clergyman who preaches to the soldiers in barracks. What do you know of the origin of Guy’s Hospital. "It_ was founded to commemorate the Gunpowder plot." Can you complain about the, intelligence of the boy who said: "Climate lasts all the time, but weather only a few days." And do you not agree that "Crooning is a special noise made by men in love?"- (" Schoolboy Howlers." I. D, Campbell, 2Y A, November 4.)
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19411107.2.10.5
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 124, 7 November 1941, Page 5
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367Don't Laugh—if You Can Help It New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 124, 7 November 1941, Page 5
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