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Side effect

History and Commentary from a Prairie Perspective

In skipping your way through cable channels you will eventually encounter a new miracle drug. Because I believe drug companies invent new drugs and then look for health problems to use them on, I just invented one myself: "Laetorictus, scientifically formulated and doctor approved, is the drug that will make a man smile all day long. A smiling man is a successful man. Ask your doctor about this new drug and its side effects. This is a male-only drug and should not be ingested by females since there is a risk of turning them into hairy monsters. Also, if taken within 18 hours of eating raw turnips the consequences may be fatal. One small capsule produces a smile that lasts four hours. If a sour expression cannot be restored after four hours, immediate medical attention is required." This warning is about side effects in the field of pharmacotherapy.

There are side effects in other industries as well, and last week I met one in the lobby of the local post office. She was a new arrival, large and weatherworn. As is my habit, I spoke a friendly greeting. She immediately elevated her rather large nose and then swivelled her eyes downward to scrutinize me contemptuously, just as though I were attempting to offer her a bucket full of bed bugs. Then she turned her back on me. (I noted that her posterior was more youthful than her face.)

Aha, I thought, she is a side effect of prosperity. She is the companion, legalized or not, of one of those fellows who is working to get crude oil out of the ground and put it into wheeled tanks that run on roads and rails and sometimes explode. I thought she and her man must have acquired a property in the town where they eat, sleep and use the yard to store a penned-up dog and their fancy recreation equipment. I suspected they had sources of supply elsewhere and contributed little profit to struggling local merchants.

This is a sad thing. When I was young and the town was a village and everybody was poor we all lived in a more gracious place. The inhabitants of the village, as they bravely endured devil winds and unending drought, were like members of an extended family. Everybody knew everybody else. Even little boys acknowledged adults with a word or a wave, although they never presumed to address Big People by their first names. It was a society in which people were kind even to people they didn't like.

There was a summer when I carried courtesy to extreme lengths. I obtained in some unremembered way the kind of peaked cap that labourers wore and in just my size. I set aside my Nutty Club beanie with the Dick Tracy shields on it and began to run all over the village doffing my cap to every female I saw, regardless of age or size. I can't recall what responses the females made, but I can make one up.

"Did you see what that young scalawag did, Gertrude? When he grows up, he will be trying to charm every good-looking woman he meets."

"I saw him, Hortense. He's like a young Rudolph Valentino. He'll break lots of hearts before he's done."

I didn't become a Rudolph Valentino. I didn't become a heart breaker. I became a klutz who was continually breaking things, but never a heart.

I intend to use my imaginary laetorictus every day. If I meet that female side effect again, I shall bellow a greeting and smile at her like a demented Cheshire cat. And smile and smile some more. So there.