Meanderings

"That's called a portmanteau," Mr. Ginley said. You know what that is, right?

photo attribution below

I rolled my eyes. Who's the head word nerd in this house?

"Yes, it's a combination of two words, like spoon+fork=spork."

"It always makes me think of the song, Kathmandu. It was one of the first songs I liked." 

Really? That song by Bob Seger was released in 1975, and it's one of the first songs you liked? I let that go, but I did call him out on the pronunciation. "Okay, but "portmanteau" doesn't rhyme with "Kathmandu," which ends in "due" not "oh."

Mr. Ginley's musings headed in another direction. "Kathmandu is in Nepal, did you know that? Didn't the Beatles go there?"

"The Beatles went to India," I corrected.

"That's where they saw the Yogi guy," he continued.

"Maharishi Mahesh Yogi," I clarified.

"My favorite Yogi is Berra," he went on.

"Was Yogi Bear named for him?" I said, picking up the thread.

"There was a lawsuit over it. Yogi Berra lost. Yogi Bear got to go on pilfering picnic baskets in Jellystone Park."

"Yogi Bear wasn't exactly a likable character," I mused. "He stole a lot of picnic baskets."

"Ya, but there's probably some sort of bear union rule, it was his job. It's what bears do, they get into food people leave sitting around. But he didn't win 10 World Series rings like Yogi Berra. Of course, neither did the Maharishi."

"Well, Yogi Bear probably didn't care because he has paws. He couldn't wear a ring anyhow," I countered. But I acknowledged the possibility that the Maharishi could have harbored a little jealousy over Berra's bling.

"Yogi Berra picked up three more World Series rings as a coach," Mr. continued. Just to keep the record straight. "So Maharishi and the Bear went 0 for 13."

As it turns out, nine of Berra's World Series rings were stolen and melted down. 

You don't suppose the Bear had anything to do with it?

Photo attribution: Algorhythms, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons