Tony Deyal
ALEXANDER GRAHAM Bellovski was the first telephone Pole. That is the first Polish joke I ever heard. Since then, I have heard many of the same stories as pertaining to many different groups Newfies (New foundland), Desis (Indian) and the Irish. Yet, for most people, there are, and always will be, Polish jokes. For instance, how do you sink a Polish battleship? Put it in water.
How do you get a one-armed Polish person out of a tree? Wave to him. Then there was this Polish man who came home one day from work, hung up his coat, took
off his hat and walked into his bedroom shouting, "Honey, I'm home!" It is then he saw his best friend in bed with his wife. Infuriated, he rushed to his cupboard, pulled out a loaded revolver, pulled back the hammer and pointed it at his own head. His wife started laughing. He got even more angry. "Don't laugh, he screamed. You're next."
Which leads to the question, how do you stop the Polish army on horseback?
You turn off the merry-go-round. What does it say on the bottom of a Coke bottle in Poland? "Open other end". Did you hear about the Polish man that locked his keys in his car? He had to use a coat hanger to get his family out.
The one I found interesting, in light of subsequent events, was a Polish joke about a pole, and not Mr. Bellovski either. An American was walking down the street when he saw a Pole with a very long pole and a yardstick. The man stood the pole on its end, vertically, and then tried to climb precariously on it with a yardstick in
his hand, trying to measure it even as he struggled with his balance. Seeing the Pole's predicament, the American took the pole out of the Polish man's hand, placed it horizontally on the sidewalk, and measured it with the yardstick. He then said, triumphantly,
"There, it's 10 feet long." Instead of being grateful, the Pole was extremely angry and grabbing his yardstick and his pole, shouted to the American, "You Yankee idiot. I don't want to know how long the pole is. What I want to know is its height."
ANGRY ABOUT STEREOTYPING
Some Polish people get extremely angry about the stereotyping of their nationality and say that Poles are intelligent and sophisticated people. In that case, the following true story would be an exception. According to Reuters, the news agency, Piotr Kardys is a Pole with a problem a pole; in fact, a telephone pole in his kitchen. It seems that a pole was erected on his premises by the telephone company and when he built a home on his property in 2001 he had to build around the pole, which is how it ended up in his kitchen. The local authorities said since no one objected when the pole went up, it was legal. Kardys, a businessman, disagreed and took it to the Supreme Court which
supports his position. The telephone company was told to remove the pole but its spokesperson, threatening to appeal, said, "You have to realise this is a big investment. High, maybe, tall perhaps, but big?"
This might be more applicable to another pole story that Reuters ran. A Canadian, who unflaggingly flogged his pole at a window in his house, won his appeal against a conviction for indecency after Canada's Supreme Court ruled there was no evidence of intent to commit an indecent act, and a home was not a public place. Daryl Clark was originally convicted of an indecent act in a public place and given a four-month sentence after a prosecution that followed complaints from his neighbour, named in court documents only as Mrs. S. The woman said she spotted Clark while she was watching television with her two young daughters in their family room. She alerted her husband, and the couple observed Clark for some time before calling the police, who said the upper part of Clark's body was visible from just below the navel. The law also says indecent acts are only crimes if the person intends to give offence. Clark clearly intended to please or pleasure himself without offence to anyone.
POLL WITH A DIFFERENCE
Talking about poles and Poles, out of Trinidad comes a poll with a difference, one that in the opinion of many citizens of that country would qualify as a greasy poll
and worthy of a Polish or pollish joke. The government commissioned a U.K.-based company, Market and Opinion Research International (MORI), to conduct a poll on crime and safety. Among the findings were that 66 per cent of people feel safe walking alone in or around their area during the day and three quarters of the population continue to feel safe in their own home after dark.
According to an editorial in one news-paper, "Scepticism has greeted upbeat findings of the MORI poll commissioned by the government to survey public opinion on the state of national well-being. That so many citizens could feel unthreatened by the
crime swirling and surging around them sounds too good to be true." The editorial continued, "By promoting MORI against the evidence of peoples' eyes, the government opens up itself to the accusation of purveying transparently self-serving propaganda."
Clearly, the conventional wisdom, the public view and the MORI, findings, are poles and polls apart. It is 'appolling' and appalling at the sametime. However, one word comes to mind. It is MORI-bund, which has as its primary meaning: "In a dying state, dying, at the point of death". Given the record number of murders in Trinidad and Tobago, you can't argue with that.
Tony Deyal was last seen talking about the Polish suicide bomber who had over 50 successful missions and the five Polish naval cadets who died before they gave up on granting an admiral his last wish- to be buried at sea.
