Ins and Outs

As a general rule, it is always better to be In than Out. Of course, there are many obvious exceptions – Trouble, for example. But in most games, and certainly in politics, one would certainly prefer the status of “in.”

One of the best places to be in is the mind, heart, or at least the memory, of somebody you care about – despite those wise or unwise words, “Out of sight, out of mind.”

But, paradoxically, “in,” at the beginning of a word, often has a negative meaning. In my Webster’s New World College Dictionary there are 32 pages of words starting with “in” – from “inability” to “invulnerable,” many of them, like those two, having the meaning of “not” or “non.” But there are only three pages of “out” words, in some of which the “out” has a positive meaning – as in “outstanding” “outlast,” and “outdo.” 

When it comes to games, one of the reasons why I preferred Cricket to Baseball (which incidentally is derived from an English game called Rounders) was that in Baseball, no matter how well you hit the ball and run once around the bases, you are no longer “in,” and have to wait until your next turn to bat again. In Cricket, you can stay “in” as long as you can keep hitting the ball and running between the two “bases.” 

Most correspondence, especially in business, is also a matter of incoming and outgoing. Although email is still generally classified by our computers, or other electronic devices, as either Received or Sent, many office desks once had “trays” labeled “IN” and “OUT,” on the assumption that somebody would be coming by periodically to deliver and pick up your messages. And we must not overlook a third receptacle, which was usually beside the desk, on the floor – a container for TRASH.

But we have other ways of expressing those same ideas by using certain prefixes. The letter “e” in front of a word (before its relatively new use, connected with something electronic, as in “ecommerce,” or “etools”) often means “out from.” One good example is the word “education,” which, in its Latin origins, indicated a “leading out,” particularly, one would suppose, from darkness or ignorance. 

There is a “fast food” chain with hundreds of locations, mainly in California, which calls itself “In-N-Out Burger.” That very name accentuates the idea of “fast,” giving the impression that there wasn’t even enough time to spell out the “and,” in the middle, which therefore had to be abbreviated to “N.” Another term for establishments of that kind is “burger joints,” although their offerings are also known, more flatteringly, as “convenience foods,” or, less kindly, as “junk foods.” The whole concept is very American. The traditional European idea of mealtimes, especially at mid-day and after the day’s work, was that they were times to relax, and eat in a leisurely way. Some countries still allot several hours to the noonday meal (followed by a “siesta”).

The hamburger (despite the name, implying an origin in Hamburg, Germany – just as “frankfurter” comes from the German town of Frankfurt) has become a staple of American culture. Only when the discovery was made, virtually within living memory, that discs of ground meat could be quickly fried in large quantities, did chains of places selling them, usually “sandwiched” in buns, begin to spring up, especially when they incorporated the very modern feature of having “drive-in” facilities – meaning that, to patronize them, you didn’t even have to get out of your car.

Many foods are named for the places where they originated. In the U.S., we have, for instance, Boston Baked Beans and the Denver Sandwich. From elsewhere come Tangerines (from Tangier in Morocco), and Kobe Steak (from Kobe in Japan, where, to ensure tenderness, farmers massage the bovines by hand – according to a 1962 pseudo-documentary Italian movie called Mondo Cane – meaning “Dog’s World.”) Then there are Jaffa oranges (from an Arab town which once had Tel Aviv as a small suburb, but which is now itself a suburb of Tel Aviv).

And finally, getting back to ins and outs, one possible reason for the existence of doors is so that we can nearly always be in or out of them. One of my epigrams, which you may find useful for placing beside your own front door (as I have with mine) says: 

“If I’m not IN, accepting what I can’t change,

I’m probably OUT, changing what I can’t accept.”