SEEING as how this is Monday, I thought it would be a good time to do a little house cleaning, tie up some loose ends and alert you to upcoming columns. There's no free
lunches or doggiesFirst, I got lots of e-mail from people wondering what happened to Spinner, the hearing-impaired poodle.
Last week I wrote about how Spinner's owner, Joyce Hunter, was looking for a home for the handicapped dog. When I talked to Joyce later, she said the response had been overwhelming and she was running out of the house to eyeball the home of a retired couple in Kahala to see if they were worthy of adopting Spinner. Look for a full report on her efforts Wednesday.
Knowing there would probably be lots of folks looking to get a free, though defective, mutt, I also urged readers to visit the Hawaiian Humane Society. That's where I picked up my dog Boomer, whose ancestral heritage is unclear but appears to be of European Napper lineage. To the best of my marginal memory, I recalled that Boomer was free, although recalled shelling out some money for reproductive equipment removal and other incidentals.
Eve Holt, the Humane Society's communications director, smacked me around (in the rhetorical sense). Humane Society dogs are not free. There is an adoption fee of $45. With that, however, your dog gets a free vaccination, deworming, identifying microchip, leash and a certificate for a free examination of the creature by the vet of your choice. There seems to be a rather subtle distinction between paying for the animal or for those services, I suggested. So Eve smacked me around some more until I understood that if people think they are getting a free pooch, they might not treat it as well as if they had to pay for it. Psychology 101.
"We would like humans to be totally humane," she added, with no intended irony.
You can't argue with a statement like that, but it does provide a segue into our next subject: city councilmen smacking cigarettes out of the mouths of teenagers.
YOU'LL recall that Councilman Steve Holmes is under investigation for allegedly slapping a teen-age girl at a bus stop because she had the audacity to smoke a cigarette in his air space. He says he merely took the cigarette from her mouth.
I said he had no business even doing that. It's black-letter Judge Judy law that an adult male should not touch a minor female, even if he's only trying to snatch a smoke off her person. I suggested it is dangerous under any circumstances to accost strangers, even seemingly defenseless teenage girls because: A) they could be armed and; B) their father, boyfriend, brother could be nearby ready to beat you to a pulp.
For this observation, a Steve Holmes supporter of the female variety branded me a "tobacco industry apologist and teen-smoking advocate."
Now, I would think that when you stick up for a girl's honor, or at least her right not to be physically accosted by a man, that women in general would be on your side. I don't think the rules of civil behavior should be set aside simply because one is offended by someone exercising a perfectly legal though politically incorrect activity.
That's what I was talking about. For the record, I am not a tobacco industry apologist. Pity any industry that has me as a defender. And I am not a teen-smoking advocate. I think teens who smoke are idiots. But their idiocy is not my problem. While Holmes supporters might think it takes a village or a self-appointed village enforcer to keep teen idiots from smoking, I believe it is up to the idiots' parents to handle that matter.
Charles Memminger, winner of
National Society of Newspaper Columnists
awards in 1994 and 1992, writes "Honolulu Lite"
Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Write to him at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin,
P.O. Box 3080, Honolulu, 96802
or send E-mail to charley@nomayo.com or
71224.113@compuserve.com.
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