ArcaMax

"Last words" used to be a popular concept. The idea was that, at the moment of your death, you were supposed to say something meaningful. They said the last words of Napoleon were, "France. The army. Head of the army. Josephine."

Josephine was Napoleon's first wife, so his last words show him either digging down to what he really loved or making a last list of things that hadn't worked out too well.

Millions of Americans hope their last words will be, "See? I made it through my whole life without using algebra."

It's the gripe of stupid high school kids that they'll never use algebra, so why learn algebra? Of course, someone uses algebra because no one ever invents anything unless it gets used. The fax machine was used for a while. Catholic theology and the use of blue line rules in a hockey game are both things that are complex, and without value unless you need to get to Catholic heaven or win the Stanley Cup.

Which is why I should have been paying more attention in American History class when the teacher told us about tariffs.

Sure, tariffs were a big deal in the 1800s, but for a kid doing high school in a town with a lot of auto plant jobs, they didn't seem like a big deal, not anymore.

So, "tariff" became kind of a lost word to me even though my brain carefully retained all the words to "One Toke Over the Line."

Nazi. Segregation. Tariff. Back-alley abortion. Fascism. There are some musty old words I thought were going to stay in the musty old books while I went on to learn the words of more happy songs.

I learned to say "empanada," and I figured that "empanada" would occupy the bit of my brain that knew how to say "lynching." I dumped the phrase "restricted country club" and picked up the phrase "two-car garage." Things were trending upward in the vocabulary department, and once I added "stuffed-crust pizza," I figured not much could go wrong in America.

And "four-wheel." As a reporter, I drove four-wheel-drive trucks because newspapers don't close in a blizzard, and there's night shifts, and this is New England.

But I never said "four-wheel drive." I said "four-wheel," as in, "My new truck? Yeah. It's four-wheel," as in being a man of some manliness and even a little bit of a cowboy. From then on, the part of my brain that used the phrase "tire chains" now contained the phrase "four-wheel."

I didn't think I'd need "white supremacist" much after the '60s, either. Now, of course, I can spend hours trying to figure out which Trump appointees ARE white supremacists.

Language is a living thing, but some parts of it were supposed to die a natural death like "measles" or "leisure suit."

I grew up among people whose selection of at-home printed matter ran heavily toward The Bible, a daily newspaper and maybe a fishing magazine. Most of them were very good people, too.

Not us.

"I have books in my house," my father said proudly.

He was the child of an illiterate mother, and he couldn't speak English until he went to school.

We have a lot of books in our house, my wife and I.

These days, I keep a close eye on those books, particularly the history books. There are words in those books I didn't think I'd have to use again. More and more, those words are starting to escape from the books and go walking around America breaking things.

To find out more about Marc Dion, and read words by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com. Dion's latest book, a collection of his best columns, is called "Mean Old Liberal." It is available in paperback from Amazon.com, and for Nook, Kindle and iBooks.