PARTLY NONSENSE- How do we watch our ‘Ps and Qs’?

ORIGINALLY WRITTEN JOEL KLAASSEN
I journeyed to White City this past Wednesday to meet with the high school yearbook staff for the upcoming year to give suggestions to make sure the book is put together correctly and to ensure the best quality product.

Since I was a little early, I was asked to wait in the office until they were ready for me. I noticed two boys of about fourth- or fifth-grade age sitting there casting ornery glances at each other. A little while later a teacher came in and told them they could now return to class, but they were to “watch their Ps and Qs.”

As they walked out one of them asked the teacher what Ps and Qs were. I sat there wondering the same thing.

A bit of research showed the meaning of Ps and Qs is not unanimous.

One meaning originated in British pubs as an abbreviation for “mind your pints and quarts.” Supposedly this warned the barkeep to serve full measure, mark the customer’s tab correctly, etc.

The simplest explanation is that the expression refers to the difficulty kids have in distinguishing lower-case p and q, mirror images of each other. Mind your you-know-whats was thus a teacher’s admonition to students.

If everything was made like Pringles, the amount of space it takes to ship things would be much less.

The smartest thing I have seen recently was a long train that was made up of containers and just wheels that hooked the containers together. No cars. Just wheels. Why didn’t I think of it?

I don’t know if anyone else remembers being afraid of some of the downtown merchants when they were kids like I was.

For the past couple of years I have tried to make an effort to say hi or greet the young kids I see on the street in some fashion. The reaction is positive, it seems, and I would recommend everyone try it if you don’t already make a practice of it.

The open house celebrating the completion of the Hillsboro water-treatment plant was last Thursday. I was impressed with how clean and pristine it all looked. The last time I had been in the plant was in 1982 when it was updated the first time.

Don Hellar, the project engineer from Pratt, told me the Hillsboro plant is the best-run plant in the state, thanks to the effort Morgan Marler and her staff put into it. He said he hated to see the project end because it was such a pleasure to work with everyone here.

We don’t spend a lot of time anguishing over mistakes we make in the newspaper because there is always another edition coming up soon that needs our full attention.

But the previous issue contained an “Early Deadline” ad we ran for news and advertising intended for this Labor Day issue of the Free Press.

To save time we simply picked up the ad that had run in the Hesston Record and changed the logo at the bottom. We didn’t really mean for anyone to take anything to the other “Record.”

It appears no one is using the doggie-doo bags we deliver weekly with the newspaper to each home in Hillsboro. The number of cookies left on the sidewalks around businesses downtown seems to be getting out of control.

At least that is what I am hearing these days.

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