The Huber guide to a PC Yuletide

Bob Huber: Humor Columnist

Now comes Christmas with its roasted chestnuts and guys begging change for charity in front of Wal-Mart stores, all of which makes me watch my language. I learned that yuletide lesson as a youngster when my mother utilized her Nebraska wit by saying, “If you can‘t talk clean during the holidays, keep your mouth shut.”

My wife Marilyn also hovered over me, hoping I wouldn’t make serious social blunders and get us erased off everyone’s holiday party list. Even my daughters, when they were kids, admonished me. They said, “If you speak those words, Daddy, you’ll get coal in your stocking. Nya, nya, nya.”

Friends and neighbors were just as bad. “No, you can’t borrow my riding lawnmower, Huber, not until you stop calling it a ‘hemorrhoid maker.’”

So I learned the hard way to invent socially acceptable words and phrases during the holidays. No longer did I exclaim, “She’s really been around.” I substituted, “She’s a well traveled companion.”

At the same time I stopped referring to certain women as “easy.” They became ”affectionately accessible.” And “tramps,” of course, became “pleasurable extroverts.”

Certain ladies were called “airheads,” because they said stupid stuff. I changed that reference to “reality impaired,” as in, “She has a James Bond IQ and is reality impaired.”

And when they were drunk or tipsy, they became “chemically inconvenienced.” When they nagged, they were “verbally repetitive.”

Well, I could go on and on. In fact, I think I will.

• They were no longer babes or broads. They turned into “pleasing persons of the gentile persuasion.”

• And if they sighed when you hugged them, they were “vocally appreciative.”

• And two-bit soiled doves, if you get my drift, became “low cost providers.”

• If they had major league headlamps, I called them “pectorally superior.”

• And if they had implant surgery, they became “medically enhanced.”

• The term “dumb blonde” became replaced by “Nordics marching to a slower drummer.”

All this is not to say that women, when they talked about men, didn’t have the same problem, trying to be civil during the holidays. For instance:

• He doesn’t have a beer gut. He has an “ample liquid grain storage facility.”

• When he gets lost and won’t ask directions, he’s “investigating alternate routes.”

• He’s not balding. He’s into “follicle regression.”

• He didn’t rob the cradle when he married a 19-year-old girl. He just preferred “generational differential relationships.”

• He wasn‘t falling down drunk. He was “periodically horizontal.”

• He wasn’t a male chauvinist pig. He had “swine empathy.”

• When he wore his pants too low, he had “backside cleavage.”

• And when he was afraid of commitments, he was “relationship challenged.”

• And when he told the same joke over and over, he was “off the pavement and down a long ditch.”

• hope you keep these words and phrases in mind during the holidays. I’d hate to erase your name from my Christmas list.

Bob Huber is a retired journalist living in Portales. He can be contacted at 356-3674.