TELEMACHUS

By Jerome Kessler

Let’s talk about TELEMACHUS. He was the first telemarketer, in the time of Homer. No, not Homer Simpson, the older one, the one that only had one name.

In ancient times, you had to be really rich to have two names. It cost a bundle to have your name carved on your door, if you had your own house, and if not, at least you had to own a door.

The ceremony at which a young man acquired his own door was known as the Adoration.

But I digress. We were talking about Telemachus, or at least I was.

As I started to explain, Telemachus was the first telemarketer. He’d go up to the top of Mt. Agamemnon, or Mount Vernon, or Mountbatten, or one of those mounts, and send semaphores, to sell petit fours to local cafes. This could only be done from flag lots, so not every Mount was suitable.

At first, he’d only waive a flag with one hand, while he kept the other hand free to hold petit fours, which he noshed for nourishment, or narishkeit. His flag technique was then called “sematwos”, until he started using both hands for flag-waving, at which point the name “semaphore” stuck. (He would get the stuck semaphore out from between his teeth with a toothpick which customarily was furnished with each petit four.)

After retiring, Telemachus tried sitting on his laurels, but the thorns abrased his buns, so he became a linguist, popularizing his language so successfully that, within a few years, the phrase “It’s all Greek to me” became universally used.