Scene: Department head meeting. All the dept. heads around the conference room table. Big guy at the head. I’m down the other end, off to the side.
So the big guy’s going around the table, taking his weekly reports. He comes to me, so I start filling him in on redistributing manpower around the station to support the mission over the holiday season (loads of people taking vacations). To set up my report I said, “Luckily, sir, this will take a minimal amount of gerrymandering.”
He interrupted, " Why is that?!"
OK… I says to myself… that makes no sense at all. So I need clarification.
“What to you mean ‘why?,’ sir?”
“I asked you to do it.”
“I did.”
“Then why’s he involved?”
WHAT?!! Reset. Take a deep breath. Department heads are starting to look at me like I have two noses. Let’s start from the beginning…
“Sir, I took a look at our total assets by department and…”
“Hold on,” he interrupts. “Who’s meandering?”
“Sir, no one is. I’m getting to the point, I’ve got the numbers here,” I try again.
“Then who’s this you got involved?” he demands.
“Who?” I respond.
“This Jerry guy.”
CLICK.
Duh, he doesn’t know the word. Meanwhile, the other heads are about evenly divided between snickering up their sleeves knowingly and glassy-eyed oblivion.
“Sir, ‘gerrymandering’ means to manipulate numbers to get a biased result. It isn’t a guy’s name. What I’m saying is we didn’t need to do that. We have enough assets in each department.”
“Scott,” he patiently explains, “That is not a real word is it?”
“Yes, sir,” I assure him.
“I don’t believe you.”
Then the Admin Officer speaks up, “I’ve heard that word before.”
“Then how do you spell it?” the big guy challenges.
“I don’t know,” says admin. “Scott’s the one that used it.”
So in front of all the departments heads, I’m spelling gerrymander. Folks are cracking up. The big guy still doesn’t believe me. So charging ahead, I begin to explain that in the early 1800 a Mass. governor redistricted the state to get some sort of a majority. And that since one of the bastardized districts looked like a salamander, a newspaper combined the governor’s name – Edward Gerry – with salamander to coin a derogatory word to describe the practice…
By now, the hole I was digging was 12-foot deep. I’d struck water and was drowning.
“Scott, see me after the meeting… and bring a dictionary.”
So after all that, the final three department heads just had to work the word “gerrymander” into their reports. And after each ‘gerrymander,’ hilarity ensued at my expense.
Curses on my vocabulary and my geeky etymologic-self.
BTW, he liked the report. Lemme go back and make sure Jerry Mandering is assigned a position, though.
