There were shorts, jeans, and casual shirts which were reserved for play.  Then there were school clothes; we did not wear shorts or jeans to school, and when we got home we changed our clothes before we went out to play.  Then there were dressy clothes, sometimes called church clothes.  They served not only for church but for almost any event dressier than school.  By the time I got to college, I had added party clothes. 

Nowadays people seem to have more clothes, but they have fewer levels of clothes. 

People come to church, as a friend put it, in the same clothes they wear to the grocery store.  The children lighting the candles have bare legs and flip-flops hanging out below their acolyte robes. 

Jeans and t-shirts are the norm at our office.  And at the company Christmas party, which is supposed to be a dressy affair, I have seen folks in jeans and sweatshirts.

I have no idea what to make of it all.

My most recent read was one of the most terrifying novels ever written — George Orwell’s 1984. I had read it in high school, but found it more frightening this time around. When I read it 50 years ago, it was just a cautionary tale.  Now it seems, well, more immediate. More possible. 

But something was missing.  I could have sworn there was a passage in that book in which Winston remembered, as a child, taking a crust of bread away from his baby sister, who was too sick to do more than cry weakly.  When he went back into her room she had been gnawed on by rats.

It was a horrifying scene.  He blamed himself for her death, of course.  And it fully explained his overwhelming fear of the rodents.  That fear eventually caused him to betray Julia, leaving him nothing but to love Big Brother, the final step in the surrender of his mind and will.

That scene was missing in the book I read this past winter.  I know, because I went back and looked for it.  Without it, Winston’s terror in Room 101 is understandable but not fully explained.

Did I make that scene up sometime in the past 50 years?  Did someone take it out because it was too gruesome?  Are they printing more than one version of the classics nowadays?  Did the original version go down the Memory Hole?  Am I committing a Thought Crime?

How about, at the user’s option, the last 20 pages of each book are tinted red, or maybe have a red border.  The 20 pages before that use orange, and maybe the 20 before that use yellow.  It’s a warning system to let others – others who have the audacity to interrupt you when you’re reading – to know the level of peril of speaking to anyone that close to the end of a book.

Come to think of it, there’s no reason a convention paper book can’t have the same coding system.

If we say “chemicals” when we mean “the substances of which everything in the universe is made” and also when we mean “artificial and often harmful substances added to foods and medicines,” how will people know what we mean?

If we say “organic” when we mean  ”made of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen molecules” and also when we mean “grown or raised with no pesticides,” how will people know what we mean?

Now, I would probably not have gone there at all if O’Rourke had not been invited.  He’s one of my favorite writers, and he was signing books, and you could not have kept me away if my skin were brown and the Arizona Highway Patrol had been lined up blocking the door.  I paid my money, which included lunch, and signed up.

I had thought I might leave right after O’Rourke’s presentation, but I didn’t want to forego the lunch I had paid for, so I sat through the rest of the speakers.

O’Rourke was, all by himself, more than worth the price of admission.  There were a couple of speakers who presented statistics showing how bad liberal policies are, which was mildly interesting.  Dr. Milton Wolf, the President’s cousin, was mildly amusing.  Michelle Malkin absolutely set my teeth on edge.  She sneered; she was mean, even caustic.  The crowd laughed and cheered.  I was embarrassed.

One of my coworkers was there, too, and when we got back to the office I commented on how much I had disliked Malkin’s presentation. My coworker, who likes Michelle Malkin very much, reminded me that O’Rourke is at least as sarcastic as Malkin.  He’s right.

So what’s the difference?  I’ve been thinking about that ever since.

Sarcasm is sometimes defined as a taunting or caustic remark.  My favorite informal definition is that sarcasm is when you say something positive and mean just the opposite.  And any definition of sarcasm would have to include the intent to be derisive or contemptuous.

By any definition, O’Rourke is sarcastic. 

But he is also one of the wittiest people I have ever read.  And I think that’s the difference.

Anyone can be sarcastic.  Really.  As a matter of fact, some of the stupidest people I know are the most sarcastic, because they don’t know the difference between sarcasm and wit.  They hurt people without making any kind of a contribution.  They’re the ones who turn to a child who has just spilled a glass of milk and say, “Good job!”  And then they laugh because they think they’re being funny.

Bare naked sarcasm requires no intelligence, no wit, no research, no effort.  I find it small-minded.  In my eyes it diminishes the person using it.  Michelle Malkin is a pretty, intelligent, and personable woman.  But I will never think well of her.

Earth compensates and restores normal climate.

Earth continues to compensate, overdoes it, and starts unchecked global cooling.

Mankind must burn increasing amounts of fossil fuels to keep the planet from becoming a ball of ice.

That set me back a notch, because I realized I couldn’t define my terms; I couldn’t put into words just what it means to feel like a Midwesterner.  So I have been surveying friends who have lived both here and elsewhere, and I think I now have some insights:

Midwesterners are the base of the pyramid, the rock-solid foundation that holds steady in times of volatility. 

We are the original back-to-the-basics folks, and we don’t much hold with some of that foolishness out there.

We are exasperatingly provincial.

While few of us work the land any more, even those of us living in the cities are seldom more than one degree of separation from those who do.  Big-city dwellers near the coasts may know where there is a sheep farm to see lambs in the spring, or a pumpkin patch to pick pumpkins in the fall, but I know the sheep farmer and the pumpkin patch owner by name.

Whatever frivolous trends may show up far east and west of us, you can be sure that by the time it gets here it will be passé wherever it originated, and whatever version of it we choose to adopt will be pretty tame.  After all, we’re not going to toss it out just because some durn-fool designer says it’s no longer fashionable.

Visiting family on the west coast a year or two ago, I was told that, no matter what my age or my weight, out there I would be expected to wear form-fitting clothes; and, if I insisted on wearing overblouses that loosely cover my stomach and my rear end, everyone who looked at me would know I was from Kansas.  It was not said unkindly, but I wish I had spoken up and said that I don’t consider being obviously from Kansas a bad thing.

The fact is, around here you’re expected to know when you shouldn’t dress like that any more.  You’re expected to be aware, when the combination of your age and weight has passed some critical point, that it’s time to cover up a little more.  If I wore form-fitting clothes around here, people would ask each other if I had looked in the mirror before I walked out the door.  And my good friends would ask me if I were okay.

So in answer to your question, my more sophisticated friend, you can spot a Midwesterner because she’ll be wearing Sarah Palin glasses long after Sarah herself has quit wearing them, modest clothing if she’s no longer a youngster, and may have just a slight scent of pumpkin patch about her.

But, I guarantee you, you can depend on her.

They were not in such a hurry that they couldn’t explain why it’s so wonderful. Apparently, “his side” and “her side” are coated with different chemicals, and they…well, I don’t know what they do. I was still partly asleep, although waking up rapidly.

So here’s my question.

If the condom comes rolled up in its wrapper, don’t the chemicals on “his side” and “her side” get all mixed together?

This past Labor Day weekend, more than 20 Greensburg residents were part of a team helping to rebuild a Boy Scout camp in Little Sioux, Iowa, that had been damaged by a tornado this past June.

Nice.