Troglodyte offers insights, anachronisms from antiquity

I got out my Reverse Time Machine this week because I wanted to ask Oog, the Caveman, a few question which have been bothering me for some time. The questions are quite insignificant, but you know how it is when you've got something on your mind and you can't get rid of it.

I found Oog chipping away on a rock. I guess he was making something, like a Stone Age iPod, but maybe I was wrong.

At any rate, I interrupted his "work," and we had the following conversation:

WaL: "Hi, Oog. Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?"

Oog: "Naw, I don't mind. All I was doing was inventing a wheel, and you've set history back by about 10,000 years by interrupting me."

WaL: "I'm sorry, but I need answers to take back to 2007 A.D."

Oog: "Apology accepted. Now go ahead and ask your #%!!*&! questions."

WaL: "Can you tell me if you are part of the Paleolithic age or neolithic period?"

Oog: "That's a hard one. We call it the Stone Age, but who cares what it's labeled except a few paleontologists? All I know is that we've got a lot of rocks around here."

WaL: "Are those hollycoks by your entryway? I understand you won Cave of the Month recently. Was it because of the flowers you planted?"

Oog: "That was my wife who planted them. She's a member of the garden club, you know. They plant flowers and rumors, by the way."

WaL: "To change the subject, did you know we executed a young criminal recently?"

Oog: "No kidding! Do you know what we do to keep violent crime from happening around here?"

WaL: "I'm supposed to be asking the questions, but what do you do?"

Oog: "We just take the guilty ones out to the tyrannosaurus rex territory, and if they can outrun those man-eating monsters, they go free. We've tried it with sabertooth tigers, but it turned out that was unconstitutional (if we have a constitution), so we had our shamans change that.

WaL: "That's sort of the way it was worked out in our case. By the way, we might have a black or lady president. What do you think of that?"

Oog: "We are not as enlightened as you are, but the garden club ladies are getting stronger. Race doesn't mean a thing to us because we're all in this thing together."

WaL: "What do you do with terrorists?"

Oog: "We just feed them to the tyrannosauruses. They don't get set free if they outrun the beasts."

WaL: "In other words, that's your Homeland Security system, isn't it?"

Oog: "That's right. We don't clutter it up with a lot of other things. Can I get back to my wheel now?"

WaL: "That's all of the questions I've got for you at the moment. The wheel is more important to civilization anyhow. Be sure you make it round!"

� 2007 Robert F. Karolevitz