February 9, 2023
Just Saying…
By Q.C. Jones
Love and Happiness – Crime and Punishment
Since the launch of the post-modern era no month has been more deeply steeped in love than February. If February were a food, it would be a ripe, plump strawberry on a stick inserted directly into a giant fountain of molten chocolate flavored love. Your pal QC Jones’ experience is this: a strawberry struggling through the molten chocolate fountain of love is very likely to find its way off the stick and onto my favorite shirt.
Riding this candy-coated strawberry on a stick analogy into the sunset, I wonder if my friends down at Burkes Cleaners keep a running tab of wedding dresses forever stained by the combination of chocolate and smushed up strawberries. In a world with more old wives tales than old wives, I searched the internet for the meaning of a stained wedding dress.
A website called DreamAboutMeaning.com says a dream with a stained wedding dress is a sign of contentment, warmth, and love. I decided to double check the theory with another web search. This time I searched for “stained wedding dress and oman.” My spelling issue landed me on a list of bridal shops in the Sultanate of Oman a small country with a long history on the Arabian Peninsula. Let’s drop this analogy and move on.
QC Jones’ parents married on Valentines Day. I have twin sisters born on Valentines Day. And as a child went through the day in a sugar and Red No. 40 food dye induced stupor. Each February 14th, I had red candy, red cupcakes, and red Kool-Aid. I would practically feel the red food dye changing me from All-American boy to a icing zombie. According to a 1983 study, rats fed such a diet were to have lower brain weight, and “substantially decreased running wheel activity level.” I was loved.
What about the crime and punishment part? Don’t worry, we’re getting there. We will tie this all together.
Puritans of the Plymouth Rock variety didn’t celebrate Valentines Day. They completely denounced Christmas, Easter, and every other holiday. They were stout, church-going people, and one expert states “In a lifetime, a Puritan might hear 15,000 hours of preaching.” Breaking this down, that number equates to 7-plus years at a full-time job. They took their churchgoing seriously. Again quoting, “New England residents who failed to attend worship services on Sunday morning and afternoon were put into stocks.”
The “stock” part sent my mind wheeling back to eighth grade English class and a satirical piece some attribute to an adolescent Ben Franklin. In the story the protagonist is having a conversation with a friend while watching a rather rotund gentleman who managed to get himself put into the stocks. The conversation went something like this:
“Look. That fellow has holes in his stockings.”
“Of course, every stock has holes.”
“No, I can see his feet.”
“Of course, that’s how stocks work.”
“I am not talking about stocks. There are holes in his stockings.”
It took about three paragraphs for the two to finally understand one another. At the time, I thought the whole hole thing was about the funniest 200-year-old joke I had ever heard.
For those of you uninformed on the stock thing, allow me to illuminate. In days of old, crime and punishment took a slightly different path. For minor indiscretions, the local judge might sentence a person to a few hours in the stocks. The guilty party sat on a bench and their feet were held firmly in a locking mechanism with holes for the feet. Typically, the stocks were positioned in the town square where others might observe the punishment. On a good day, the upright would collect rotten vegetables and toss them at those being punished. A couple of hours of public ridicule, and the guilty would slink back to their daily chores just a little worse for wear.
I would like to propose a return to the good old days. Let me explain. According to the American Bar Association, more than 11 million people have had their driver’s license suspended for reasons completely untied to driving violations. Most of these suspensions are tied to unpaid fines for minor infractions. They can’t pay the fine, they lose their license, and this has repercussions on their ability to work, care for their family – things like taking children to daycare, or grocery shopping. If caught driving without a license, they get more fines. The Bar Association sees this as a vicious circle.
Now for my proposal. The courthouses on both sides of the river have generous space in front for the installation of stocks. Both are conveniently located to allow drive-by viewing of the punishment in progress. Why not give those convicted of minor offences the choice of a fine or stock time?
As a public service, a point to ponder. There is no statute of limitations on parking tickets. That parking ticket I got back in 1972 could warrant stock time. Go sparingly on the rotten tomatoes. Just saying… QC Jones
