|
|
'Suffercating' to Get the Vote
| Article
# : |
18156 |
|
|
Section : |
LIFE
|
| Issue
Date : |
11 / 1990 |
1,404 Words |
| Author
: |
Eve R. Wirth
|
If an election were held to select the funniest comedians in our nation, children would likely win by a landslide. Teachers can attest to kid's talent for silliness, for they witness the numerous classroom gems delivered in oral presentations or handed in on exams, reports and homework assignments.
During my ten years of teaching elementary school, I was entertained by some of the zaniest material ever scribbled. Clearly, these wide-eyed wiggledy-wits showed an amazing ability to understand generalize, and draw their own personal conclusions about the world around them.
This year marks the seventieth anniversary of the passing of the Nineteenth Amendment, that long-sought and much-crusaded-for legislation granting suffrage to women. Let us now turn to the children for their unexpurgated comments on what really happened back in 1920.
The A.M. Hour
First, a few general comments from our social historians to be:
"The Nineteenth Amendment was passed on August 26, 1920. No one knows for definite if it was during the A.M. of F. M. hours."
"Women have been fighting for equal rights and the vote since Adam and Eve, and probably even earlier than that."
"Allmaniac books are good places to look up stuff like Women's Suffrage."
"Uppermoist in the sufferagists' minds was to get the pollitishuns to give women the vote, too. To the men of the day, it was undermoist."
"Fractshunally speaking, for an amendment to be approved to become a law it has to be approved by a 2/3rds majority in the Senate, and a 2/3rds majority in the Representative house. Then it has to be approved by 2/3rds of the states, fractunshally speaking."
Putting a strange twist on words, as you've already seen here, is not unusual for the elementary school set. Here's and interesting answer to a fairly ordinary question:
Q: "How long were the early suffragists involved in the women's rights movements?"
A: "Some were small and thinwise. Some were big and fat-wise, but averagewise they were sixty incheswise without shoes."
I've run across some peculiar nonstop sentences in my time, but this one may take the cake:
"When the women found out they could finally vote just like men, their teeth glistened white with eggcitement as their lips curled upward with thrills and chills and tears of joy rolled down their pink cheeks while their happy hearts swelled up heavily with heaving and galloping heart-beats like six hundred a minute, while their poor husbands fainted."
Young Todd was just as descriptive but far less
...
Read Full Article
|
|
