Free Norman Invasions by John Norman Page B

devices to attentive, concerned parents. The motto was still “Spare the club and spoil the child,” but it was now understood that the club would be cushioned.
    This, then, is the story of the hairbrush, how it came to be, and how, interestingly, we owe to this small and humble artifact the very survival of the human race.
    It is rumored, incidentally, that in certain backward homes, in primitive areas, the hairbrush is still used as a disciplinary device.

Bamohee
    Yes,
bamohee
.
    That is the word,
bamohee
.
    It may sound to you like a mere colligation of meaningless syllables, So, too, did it to me, once.
    I first heard this word from my grandson, Thomas, who was verging on three at the time. That is, approximately, as I have later discovered, the bamohee time, that is, the time in which that unusual combination of syllables, the mighty, pregnant “bam,” the arresting, startling “oh,” hinting of awesome, infinite wonder, and the sudden, devastating “hee” of insight and revelation, in a sudden synergistic burst of cognitive fury and illumination unlock the meaning of a species, the mysteries of time and space, the secrets of the universe and the riddle of being itself, itself.
    But allow me to begin at the beginning, as far as these things have a beginning.
    First, as far as I know, no other animal species says
bamohee
. It seems idiosyncratic to the human species. There is no record of its utterance, at least insofar as I am aware, by any other mammal, the cat, the horse, the dog, the mongoose, and so on. It is true that it may be mindlessly repeated by certain unusual birds, most notably the gaudy, nut-savoring parrot, but, as far as we can tell, it carries no special significance for our avian friends. To them it seems a mere nonsense word, as far as we can determine. Certainly, when Polly beaks the syllables her beady eyes do not suddenly mist and glow, her claws do not clasp her perch with alarmed fervor, her feathers do not lift, ruffle, and shudder with ecstasy, no more than when she says ‘kitchen sink’ or ‘vacuum cleaner’, two of her favorites, though lagging far behind the communicative “I want a cracker, stupid.”
    At one time, shortly before his third birthday, Thomas began to say
bamohee
frequently. It seemed to be a universal word, which might have stood for almost anything, a cookie, the neighbor’s dachshund, a soiled diaper, the binomial theorem, anything. How naive we were!
    Thomas would approach his parents with all the love, trust, and sincerity of a child raised as he was, raised in such a manner as to expect the best and noblest of the world into which he would soon be precipitated, a world he would soon discover, alas, as do we all, not designed expressly for his benefit. But the bamohee time of youth precedes normally the period of being pelted and punctured with “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.” The lacerations and bruises of existence, at the bamohee time, lie around the corner, far from the crib and that mysterious, inexplicable artifact in the parents’ bathroom, the potty chair. Thomas would approach his parents, look at them earnestly, and say, “Bamohee.”
Bamohee
, of course, is not the first word a child is likely to say. That word seems to be “No,” at least in English and Spanish, “Non” in French, “Nein” in German, “Nyet” in Russian, and so on. To be sure, “No” is often followed by another word, for example, “No, Mama,” “No, Dada,” and so on. It seemed as though Thomas, in his innocence, with his fresh view of the world, was honestly interested in communicating something, in telling his parents something, something important, that he was benevolently interested in sharing something with them, something which they might find of great significance, but they, alas, representatives of the insouciant, careless generation, so