On Second Thought

When people hear that I have created and copyrighted ten thousand epigrams, none of which is longer than seventeen words, they often ask me which was Number One. Of course, I can and do tell them – but when I wrote it, I had no idea of what it was going to be the First of. The truth is that I had been writing somewhat strange little expressions for many years, and already had quite a collection of these “thoughts.” A time finally came when I wanted to share at least a few of them but wasn’t sure how best to do it. I showed them to a few friends, and then started reciting some at parties, as a kind of one-line poetry. People would tell me that I ought to publish them – but I didn’t like the idea of putting a whole bunch into a book, because I wanted to emphasize my feeling that each should be considered as a separate work. Finally it occurred to me that the best way to do that would be to put them on postcards. In those days (the 1960s) when there was not yet such a thing as email, postcards were still a very popular means of communication, especially because the postage rate for postcards was substantially less than for regular first-class mail. So, I decided to bring out an experimental group of ten, which I could try selling in some local stores.

But which ten would it be? I really had no idea of what I was doing – so I just chose some from my stockpile, more or less at random. And, to at least appear orderly, I gave them numbers, without attaching any significance to the sequence. Number One turned out to have the message, “Let’s Keep the Christ in Chrysler.” Whatever gave me that idea? Bumper strips were popular at that time, and I had seen one that said “LET’S KEEP THE CHRIST IN CHRISTMAS.” The fact that it was on a car – I never knew what type of car – and that I knew one of the big car-makers was Chrysler – which sounds a little bit like “Christ” – prompted me to put these ideas together and come up with keeping Christ in Crysler. (Actually the name stems from the German Kreisler, which meant “a maker of earthenware utensils,” i.e. what in English we would call a “potter.”) And, to keep us up to date, I should point out that the company name has now officially become “Stellantis” because it is the American subsidiary of a multinational car-maker of that name.

So that explains my arbitrarily chosen epigram Number One. But what about Number Two? What it says is: “HOW MUCH DO I LOVE YOU? – LESS THAN YOU’LL EVER KNOW.”

I liked the idea of twisting well-known expressions to give them a new, perhaps less pleasant, meaning. But I need hardly tell you that, as a postcard, this expression was never a best seller.

But coming, even immediately, after First, has much broader connotations than this. Calling something “second class” or “second rate” almost always connotes inferiority. And usually, so does “second hand” – although I must here tell you that it enters my own background in a very personal way. My mother was born and grew up in Toronto, Canada, where her parents had come as immigrants from England. They were Jews whose own families had come there as refugees from Eastern Europe at a pre-Holocaust time when Jews were persecuted in a rash of anti-Jewish outbreaks in what were called “Pogroms.” The Jews were tolerated in Britain, but saw more opportunity on this side of the Atlantic. And that is how my mother, Amelia Adler, came to grow up in a town where her own relatives were mostly in the “Second-hand” trade – i.e. buying and selling goods which are now often called “pre-owned,” because “second-hand” has acquired such negative connotations. But it was an easy kind of business to get into – and my mother, having grown up in it, was so enamored of it that she even tried to get me started in it when I was only about eight years old, sending me out to stand at a street corner with a little shoulder-tray and some merchandise like shoelaces. Her heart was in it – but mine wasn’t, and I never did anything like it again.

That should be enough of the subject – so I propose to end the article at this point. Will anybody second the motion?