Tenny runners...

[hpst@earthlink.net]

JL,

Rubbers?

You mean those things which as kids we could only buy in gas station toilet
rooms from machines which had signs on them which said For Prevention of
Disease Only with the word disease invariably scratched out and replaced by
babies. :-)

This probably at least partially explains the reason that the word rubbers
which means rubber shoes especially in terms of those which only cover the
shoe may have gone out of fashion but I still hear people my age talking
about putting on their rubbers with no sense of irony.

Perhaps it is because the word is plural rather than singular although you
may have heard Shel Silverstein's song about Stacy Brown.

The lyrics go:

STACY BROWN GOT TWO

Have you hard about Stacy Brown?
He got every chick in town.
He got looks, he got class...
Do anything to get a little lass.
And everybody shout at him as he walks his girlies past...

Everybody got one
Everybody got one
Everyboy got one
But Stacy Brown got two.

Do you know the reason for his success?
They say that he is double blessed
They say that Stacy Brown was born
Just a little bit deformed
But still his girlfriends wake up smilin' every morn.

Everybody got one
Everybody got one
Everyboy got one
But Stacy Brown got two

Why they climbing up the wall?
Young ones run and old ones crawl.
He got two and that's a fact,
But no one knows where the other one's at.
On his elbow, on his knee, or underneath his hat?

Everybody got one
Everybody got one
Everyboy got one
But Stacy Brown got two

Oh well what the hell.

I don't know the reason or where I first learned the word except via
detective novels or movies but when I hear the word gumshoe I associate it
not with a P.I but as a police detective who is, of course, not a flatfoot
who is a uniformed officer.

My impression is that fictional P.I.s often use the term gumshoe as a
derogative term for police detectives but I couldn't swear to it.

Page Stephens

> [Original Message]
> From: Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM>
> To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Date: 9/22/2006 12:35:50 PM
> Subject: Re: [ADS-L] Tenny runners...
>
> A "gumshoe" is at least as likely to be a "P.I." as it is to be a "police
detective."
>
>   I never actually heard the word applied to shoes. My grandparents, both
born in Manhattan in the 1880s, always said "sneakers" (never "sneaks").  I
doubt that they said "gym shoes,' but am not certain.
>
>   They may have adopted the word only as adults, but I have no reason to
think so. When did sneakers become a familiar article of clothing?
>
>   BTW, the "rubber sole" superstition also applied to wearing rubbers all
day, as some kids like me tried to do in class on rainy days
>
>   Still Freudian. "Rubbers." Get it ? Get it ?  Feet, genitalia, too
primitive !
>
>   JL
>
>
>
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> ------------------------------------------------------------
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