The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

PAGE 24 TERRACE BAY NEWS MARCH 4, 1971 THE BILL SMILEY COLUMN FIG LEAVES INSTEAD OF SLACKS? By Bill Smiley I have just got home from some- thing as rare and delightful as a personally conducted tour of Buckingham Palace -- a teachers' staff meeting that lasted only half an hour. This is equivalent to building the Pyramids in three weeks. Meetings, as such, are a parti- cular annex in hell for anyone who has been in the newspaper business and attended at least one, and sometimes two, every working day of the year. Ninety-five percent of meet- ings are unnecessary, unenlight- ening, and unproductive. They are the refuge of bores of both sexes, who take out their per- sonal frustrations by frustrating everyone else. These people have their little dinkies: Raising points of order; moving amend- ments to the motion; and hag- gling for interminable times over items that could be solved in eight seconds by a three-year-old with two heads. Occasionally, a meeting pro- duces sparks, a clash, a conflict of personalities or ideas that light the Stygian gloom. I well remember one town council meeting. One of the councillors, somewhat the wear for some- thing or other, called one of the other councillors, "a gibbering old baboon." A nice thrust. He wasn't too far off the mark, but was in no condition himself to hurl such charges. The offended party promptly started peeling off his jacket, and offer- ed to thrash the other "within an inch of your life." The other councillors, and even the mayor, quailed. Chiefly, because both councillors were well into the seventies. I might add that the only blood shed was verbal. But that was a meeting. Staff meetings are not quite that bad, but they inevitably produce in me a headache so fierce that only a great dollop of some sedative beverage can allay it. I've seen adults haggling bit- terly for half an hour over the chewing of gum. Where it could be chewed, when it should be chewed, and how it should be chewed (open mouth or closed.) The only result was that the kids went on blithely chewing gum, wherever, whenever and however they could get away with it. Deep moral, social and psy- chological issues are involved in a problem of this magnitude. Is gum bad for the teeth? What do you do if you send a kid to the office, he removes his gum on the way, and swears angelically 'that it was the teacher's imagina- tion, that he was really chewing his cud out of sheer nervous- ness? Is it better for the student to chew gum than to chew his fingernails down to the blood? "Jesus wore long hair and a beard, didn't he?" How do you counter this one (a favorite, by the way, among male students)? Do you say, "Uh, well, uh, Jesus, uh, THROW THAT GUM IN THE BASKET!" Or would you say, "0O.K., Buster, turn that blackboard into an ouija board." This particular staff meeting was about girls wearing slacks. Human experience has showed that girls will wear whatever other girls are wearing. And girls, these days, are wearing slacks. They are comfortable, they can look smart, they are warm in our frigid winters, they prevent boys. from peeking up the stairs as the girls ascend in mini-skirts, and they have probably contributed more to containing the popula- tion explosion than the old- fashioned night-dress. Anyway, I expected a mara- thon. About three hours. They can wear slacks, but only once a week. They can wear slacks, but they can't wear blue jeans. No- body in my class is going to wear slacks. If it's all right for the boys to wear blue jeans, why can't the girls. And so on. It was fantastic, but the open- ly, and bluntly expressed feeling of the majority was that girls should be allowed to wear what- ever was in style. And that was that. One commercial teacher, who could have been expected to come down heavily on the side of "no slacks," said she didn't care if they wore fig leaves as long as they were "neat and tidy." I'd like to hear what you think about long hair, girls wear- ing slacks, our day. Drop a line. The Argyle Syndicate and all the other' things that were unacceptable in RED CROSS - Cont'd from page 23 ..... the mentally retarded, the deaf and the blind. Many © volunteer hours are dedicated to helping the sigk, the: lonely and the elderly - visiting veterans in hospitals, caring for families when the mother is ill, offering friendship and help to shut-ins, and meeting the needs of senior citizens by providing "meals on wheels", organizing fitness and recreation programmes and ma= king them feel part of the community. For many elder ly people who would not otherwise venture outdoors, the Red Cross has supplied wheelchair service and transportation to hospital clinics for treatment, or to i public gardens, art showings, theatres or zoos for recreation. Many women volunteers use their talents to make layettes, bedding and articles of clothing for the victims of disasters at home and abroad. They also | prepare millions of cotton swabs for use at blood donor clinics. E It is through the financial support of the Canadian public that the articles used for operating these ser- vices are purchased and maintained - the sewing ma- chines, the wheelchairs, the instructional aids for the teaching of care in the home and water safety, the = items loaned to the public from the Red Cross sick- room equipment loan cupboards and the special appa- ratus necessary for the teaching of the handicapped. ALEX TREBEK How'd you like to spend your afternoon with Alex Trebek=-he's one of CBC Radio's most swinging bachelors! Aside from being young, handsome © and bilingual, Alex is © also the amiable and en- = tertaining host of the : Toronto edition of CBC. Radio's After Noon ? heard Mondays, Wed- 3 nesdays and Fridays at» 1:15 p.m. EST. ; The Red Cross will need approximately one million blood donations in 1971 to meet the needs of patients in Canadian hospitals.