Red in the Face

Sunday finds Oscar and I hard at work.

I'm carefully raking the leaves on the front lawn. Oscar is working very hard watching me rake leaves.

Oscar doesn't have any leaves to rake. By some strange combination of wind direction and land elevation, his leaves seem to find a way to land everywhere but on his own property. This happens without fail every year. Oscar doesn't even own a rake.

Some people are just lucky that way.

***

Big Doug has a beautiful shrub at the front of his house. Over the last few weeks, it has turned a brilliant shade of red. Mrs. Wonders tells me the shrub is a burning bush.

It really is quite striking.

***

I decide to take a break from raking. Reluctantly, Oscar agrees to take a break from watching me. We sit down on my front steps and gaze around The Sack.

Pointing across the street, I comment on the beauty of Big Doug's burning bush. Oscar says it looks like the colour of blood. I reply that it's more like "apple red."

We debate this matter for several minutes. Finally, Oscar says, "You say, to-may-to and I say, to-mah-to."

***

Oscar's comment leads to a new debate.

"I bet the majority of people say, to-may-to." I say confidently.

Oscar disagrees. He thinks to-mah-to is slightly favoured by the general populace.

***

Because we have far too much time on our hands, we decide to take an informal poll of available Sack residents. Oscar runs home to get a tomato. We need it to induce responses from people.

Oscar returns ten minutes later. His wife, B.W. was very suspicious when he came in to get the tomato. He told her we were involved in some very important linguistic research. First, he had to explain what linguistics meant. Then he had to explain about the tomato.

Oscar says B.W. still thinks he's planning to throw the tomato at someone.

***

The first three people we encountered were Florence, Gordon and Computer Doug. Each turned out to be "to-may-to" people.

I worked very hard to keep the smirk off my face.

The next person we saw was Big Doug. He's a "to-mah-to" man. As we were talking with him, Ben and Norma pulled into their driveway. We walked over to their car and met them as they got out.

Both Ben and Norma said "to-mah-to."

Oscar did a little jig on their driveway. Ben and Norma went into their house, glancing back at us with wary looks on their faces.

Since Ben and Norma are a couple, I didn't think it was fair to count them as two votes. When two people are together for a long time, it's inevitable they'll pick up each other's speech patterns.

Oscar wouldn't buy it.

***

We needed a tie-breaking opinion.

It took almost half an hour of sitting in the cold for someone else to show up. To keep warm, we threw the tomato back and forth for a while.

Finally, Little Doug drove into The Sack.

***

Oscar stepped in front of Little Doug's car, waving his arms like a traffic cop. Little Doug rolled down his window as Oscar held out the tomato in a slow, dramatic fashion.

"What's this?" he demanded.

Little Doug looked at me for a second, then back again at Oscar.

"That's a to-mah-tah." he said.

***

Oscar tried to claim victory. I said that Little Doug's response did not match the established criteria for our research. We argued for a few minutes and then I threatened to throw the tomato at him. He agreed we would ask one more person.

***

It was a quiet day in The Sack. We didn't see anyone else and it was starting to get colder.

The only other person around was young Doo.

Doo was busy throwing rocks into the empty foundation of Burning Manor. He was getting back at Burning Manor for splitting his head open a few weeks ago.

Oscar was the first to raise the possibility of asking Doo for his opinion. I looked at Oscar as if he'd lost his mind.

But it was getting colder by the minute.

***

We realized that asking Doo how he pronounced "tomato" would be a long shot. Doo can't even pronounce his own name properly. Only seasoned Sack people can interpret Doo's words without asking him to repeat himself.

Finally, we decided to give it a try. If Doo gave us a Little Doug-like response, we would declare the survey a draw.

***

We called Doo over to my front steps. I held the tomato in front of his eyes and spoke very slowly.

"Doo, what do call this?"

He reached out to take it from my hands, but I pulled it back. Then I repeated the question.

"What do I git if I'm wight?" he said slyly.

"You can keep it, if you get it right." Oscar said.

Doo pulled on his chin and twisted his mouth back and forth. Finally, he folded his arms and looked directly at me and then at Oscar.

"It's a to-may-to."

***

He said it perfectly. Oscar dropped his head between his knees trying to stifle a laugh. Doo gave us a quick, wide smile and plucked the tomato from my hands. Then he headed down the street toward Burning Manor.

When he got to Burning Manor, he walked tentatively toward the snow fence surrounding the foundation. He stood on his toes and peered into the former basement of the house.

Then he wound up and threw the tomato into the foundation.

***

Conclusions? Firstly, a slim majority of Sack people say "to-may-to" rather than "to-mah-to." Secondly, there are many words Doo cannot pronounce properly, but "tomato" is not one of them.

Finally, Oscar and I have agreed that Big Doug's bush is the colour of a ripe tomato.

***