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B YOU'RE A "BOYCHICK"*
Marjorie Gottlieb Wolfe
Syosset, New York
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*A "boychchick" or "boitshick" is a little boy and an affectionate term for a boy or man.
Leo Rosten's book, "Hooray For Yiddish," tells the story of two traveling salesman, competitors, who meet in a railway station. They exchange Sholem Aleichem's, then eye each other.
"So--eh--where are you going?"
"I'm going--to Pinsk."
"Pinsk? Mmh...Listen, boychik: when you tell me you're going to Pinsk, you expect
me to figure you're going to Minsk. But I happen to know you ARE going to Pinsk--
so why are you lying?"
Corey Kilgannon wrote a piece titled "A Guide for Summits and Lox (New York Times, 11/4/12).
Kilgannon describes Chhapte Sherpa (AKA "Sherpa Lox"), who grew up in a tiny village in the eastern Himalayas. He has worked for a decade at Russ & Daughters as a fish slicer and counterman. Ross Tupper says, "If he's serving a young man, he might say 'Boychick, what do you want?'"
Lisa Traiger wrote an article in 2003 titled, "Boychiks in the Mall." She describes the Zandl Group, a market research firm, which tracks what's hot and cool among "boychiks" from 9 - 17-year-of-age.
Included in Zandl's "hot sheet" is a list of teenspeak.
Traiger says it shouldn't be long before "vos 'iz' or "nu?" replaces "what's up"
or "s'up" on urban playgrounds. And, instead of "phat" will the 15-year-old girl
become a "shayna=-maidl"?
And, maybe relaxing will be called "shluffing" instead of "chillin."
My favorite "boychick" story is found in Father Brian Cavanaugh's book, "The Sower's Seeds - 120 Inspiring Stories for Preaching, Teaching and Public Speaking. Story #71 is titled, "How We Look at Things." The author is unknown.
HOW WE LOOK AT THINGS
There is the story of identical twins (two boychiks). One was a hope-filled optimist:
"Everything is coming up roses!" he would say. The other twin was a sad and hopeless
pessimist. He was sure that Murphy, as in "Murphy's Law," was an optimist.
The worried parents of the boys brought them to a a local psychologist.
He suggested to the parents a plan to balance their personalities. "On their next birthday, put them in separate rooms to open their gifts. Give the pessimist the best toys you can afford, and give the optimist a box of manure." The parents followed these instructions and carefully observed the results.
When they peeked in on the pessimist, they hear him audibly complaining, "I don't
like the color of this computer...I'll bet this computer will break...I don't like the game...
I know someone who''s got a bigger toy car than this..."
Tiptoeing across the corridor, the parents peeked in and saw their little optimist
gleefully throwing the manure up in the air. He was giggling, "You can't fool me! Where
there's this much manure, there's gotta be a pony!"
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Marjorie Wolfe will be speaking at the following S. Florida libraries this winter:
Delray Beach Public Library
Lantana Branch Library
Greenacres Library
Haagan Ranch Road Library
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