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SMART TALKSMART TALK SMART TALK
By  Nurse Garrel S. Utter

POSSIBLE DANGER: Clayton Johnson looked grave. The town constable for Underbelly, Texas, cleared his throat, resisted spitting on camera, and looked nervously into “Scoop” Johnson’s lens. At the Institute for the Linguistically Impaired, we sat forward in our Fowler Lounge seats and watched the screen just as nervously. We knew we could count on Constable Johnson for a dizzying display of redundancies. He didn’t disappoint.

“The automobile was red in color. Witnesses who saw the incident indicated that said vehicle was proceeding ahead at a high rate of speed, willfully ignoring safety precautions and presenting a possible danger to the local residents.”

We sat back and applauded sarcastically, as if a server had dropped a tray of stemware. Constable Johnson won’t come to the Institute for treatment of his redundancy syndrome, even though we’ve offered it for no charge.

But over schooners of sarsaparilla, we decided that maybe he’s not so dumb. If he had spoken good English and said, “Witnesses reported a red car speeding and endangering residents,” he’d have used only one third as many words. That would have given him only one third as much air time.

Dumb like a fox, we agreed, reaching for something stronger.

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