By Ronald Kow
Senior Executive Subeditor
ronald@sph.com.sg

 

LET me tell you this story which I heard during my schooldays and it is, in a way, something that was said in a speech upon graduation.

An American farmer had high hopes in his daughter, who was an only child. Poor as he was, he decided that she should get a proper education. So he sold his farm -- lock, stock and barrel, including some cows and a prized stud bull -- to raise funds so she could go to a good university in another state.

A few years later, she graduated but he did not have the resources to attend her graduation. Soon, she came back home. The first thing she told her father upon meeting him, after the obligatory hugs and maybe some high-fives, was: “Daddy, I ain’t a virgin anymore.” She actually said “I ain’t a virgin no more” but let’s not make it sound worse than it really was.

Anyway, as expected, the father was fuming mad. He nearly had a heart attack.

“What?” he asked her, angrily. “I sold all my property, sacrificed everything to send you to a good university so that you could get a proper education... and you still say ain’t?”

Well, ain’t that a touching story?

What do we do about valedictorian Ms Trinetta Chong, who used the F-word at the end of her arousing -- I mean rousing -- speech on behalf of her Nanyang Technological University (NTU) cohort that had the auditorium cheering?

Many people agree that it is not offensive to use the word among your peers. Well, she was certainly among her peers. Except that there were otherwise proud parents and possibly some younger, impressionable siblings in attendance, who we just hope were bored by the long speech and did not hear the last few words.

If she was the farmer’s daughter, her father might have just told her: “Looks like after so many years in the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, your vocabulary still hasn’t improved.”

I am very sure that her vocabulary is much wider than mine. It was just a case of an unfortunate choice of word. She has apologised and if all of you unforgiving people don’t accept her apology, I do.

There is another story. I don’t make these things up. This is a real one. I mean, someone in an authoritative position told me the story.

Again it happened during my schooldays. My Secondary 4 class was doing a project on the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) and I was the team leader for the group that met, was briefed by and tried our best to understand the workings of the Anti-Vice Squad.

The class project is in a bound volume in the school library ... provided it didn’t go AWOL somewhere between Bras Basah Road and Grange Road or Bishan.

An Inspector in the Anti-Vice Squad was telling stories -- scaring us innocent schoolboys (long, long before Youtube) -- about sexual offences, brothels, pimps and prostitutes, and showing us gory pictures of private parts mutilated by venereal diseases and so on.

But, to his credit, he did balance it with some humorous tales. And what better tale to spin than one about the Bard -- the great story-teller -- himself.

The story goes that William Shakespeare was sitting in the park, probably seeking inspiration to compose yet another sonnet to compare his beloved to a summer’s day, when a couple nearby started to strip themselves and then made passionate love.

A policeman came along and arrested the couple for an indecent act in a public place. Shakespeare, besides lending his cloak to cover up what was left of the modesty of the duo, was also taken to the police station to have his statement recorded, perhaps in iambic pentameter, as a witness.

Presently (which, during Shakespeare’s time meant “soon” or “in due course” and not “at present”), the case came up to the courts and it was the Bard’s turn in the witness stand.

The judge asked: “Mr Shakespeare, please tell the court exactly what the accused couple were doing on such and such a date at such and such a place.”

The Bard thought for a while and then said: “Your Honour, forsooth, yea, verily. They were ... they were ...!” and he had to use the F-word, in the present participle, like the gerund form used by the NTU valedictorian in a slighlty different part of speech, if you care about such details.

The judge was shocked. Not sure if he had a heart attack. Maybe not yet as the proceedings had to continue and justice had to be done and seen to be done.

“How can you,” he inquired, “a writer of such renown, composing countless sonnets and plays, often conjuring up such colourful dialogue as ‘whereupon she grew round-wombed, and had indeed, sir, a son for her cradle ere she had a husband for her bed’ (King Lear, Act 1, Scene 1), obviously a man to whom words droppeth like the gentle rain from heaven, always intoxicating us with the exuberance of your verbosity... how can you use such a word?"

Shakespeare thought long and hard again. He felt like telling the court: "What's in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet." But he decided to save that line for a play that he was working on, about a pair of star-crossed young lovers from the feuding Montague and Capulet families.

He finally composed and recited an impromptu poem (warning: euphemisms used):

“Her skirt was up; his posterior bare,
Family jewels hanging in the air;
If they were not (insert part of famous last words by valedictorian hereinbefore mentioned)..., then I was not there.”

So, maybe, said speaker heard of this fake Shakespeare story before and was, well, just quoting the Bard in an exhibition of her erudition.

By the way, I left out this Shakespeare snippet from the report on the Anti-Vice Squad so it cannot be found in the bound volume.