Q. What was so wrong about the Norman king, Henri the Bad?

A. Plenty. I don’t want to talk about it. Let me just say that it started out with his not going to school. He was called all sorts of names, mostly by his mother. When he grew up, he married Anne of Aragon--or was it Aragon of Anne?--the one who pouted a lot and claimed her feet were always cold in the castles they lived in. “Why can’t we go to the Riviera?” she asked. But her inconsiderate and loutish husband would say, “There isn’t any Riviera--well, actually there is, but there aren’t any hotels yet--so you can’t go.” He never built anything himself, he just louted around. Their son, naturally enough, was Philip the Worse, but that’s another story.

Q. Why do lions sometimes eat zebras and, other times, lie around peacefully right next to them?

A. Your average lion, lolling about like that, thinks that zebras are horses and that they are behind bars. He believes that they’re in perambulating protective cages of some sort and forgets all about them. Then he gets his appetite back, his hunger releasing a certain chemical that affects his retina so that he can no longer distinguish the color black--the color of the stripes or bars. Contemplating the zebras, he thinks, all of a sudden, “They’re out!” And he, or she, as the case may be, and usually is, jumps them. And you know the rest, from all the colorful and educational TV programs on Africa.

Q. How come the plural of “gladiolus” is “gladioli”? How can us be singular and I be plural?

A. You see, it comes from Latin, and--never mind. Let me just tell you that people who still speak Latin--in a little-known corner of southeastern Romania--have a lot of trouble with English intrusions into their language: “squid pro crow” and “scrumptious est delicto” on their menus, “Sic Transit Glorious Monday” for urban subway strikes at the beginning of the week, and “Abe has the corpses” in their law courts. It’s pretty much a trade-off. We take “excelsior” (singular) from them and they take “wood shavings” (plural) from us. Don’t worry about it. Just add a little water and put the flowers in.

Q. Are “hollyanders” rabbits or ducks? And what are “fitzbergers” anyway? And “Canadian squidgins”?

A. The answer to your first question is neither; they are a new breed of goat, with forelocks on their chins. Keen interest in being displayed in them, since they may eat plastic. As for Canadian squidgins, they are in between a frog and a hard place: they are a mammalian insect that makes a soft plopping noise when it hits the water, trying to escape from I don’t know what. But you hear the sound quite often in the cottonwoods of upper Manitoba, and occasionally in Saskatchewan…. Coming back to fitzbergers, I never heard of them before, or never met them. I think you may be confusing them with the -geralds or -randolphs or -gibbonses. Say hello to Maud.

Tree of Northern Lights (audio)

From Jesse's poetry collection, Don't Tell Me Trees Don't Talk.

Q. I have a lot of trouble with memory aid techniques, especially the associational kind. For instance, in order to remember the name of a client I was recently introduced to, by the name of Henderson, I told myself the following short story: “der is German for the, which is so neutral that I had better not think about it at all, but turn to a gender sound like the syllable that follows: son, imagined as a big, strapping, hungry fellow who audaciously craves a chicken.” But I came out with--Wilcox. Of course, I wound up contacting a rival firm instead of a customer. This is embarrassing.

A. Please, no emotions--even in long questions. I believe that you are just trying too hard. Don’t be so sophisticated or polysyllabic in your associations; never use a word like “audaciously,” for instance. Use very simple words and concepts. For example, here’s how I remembered a man named Phillips: first “screwdriver,” then the logical sequence “hammer--nail--dead,” with the switch pair “head/hat,” turning to “parasol--sunburn--skin oi,” pivoting on the doublet “oil/petroleum” toward “energy--cartels--OPEX,” with a last diptych “OPEC/Gulf,” leading straight to “Houston, Texas--Bartlesville, Oklahoma”--the headquarters of: “Phillips”! Always take the line of least psychic resistance, and you’ll be all right--and normal. As in Norman, Oklahoma(!) again. See what I mean? God help you.