When I was in training to be a radio intercept operator back in the late '60s,
the Army taught us how to copy code by sending dits and dahs through headphones
to groups of 30 or so trainees. We then would shout, for example, "Dit-Dah!
Alpha!" and allow the pinkies of our left hands to depress the A key. The
typewriters were called "mills," and typed in all caps. Learning the code was
apparently not everyone's cuppa, and during my training cycle, several trainees
defenestrated their mills, much to the consternation of the instructors. If you
washed out of code school, your enlistment was truncated to three years from
four, but your new assignment was usually Infantry Training School.
FWIW, I defenestrated nothing or no one, and learned the code so well that I
still can recite it nearly flawlessly. Copy it, too, if the operator isn't too
ham fisted.
--Bob Whitmire
www.bobwhitmire.com
On Sep 24, 2010, at 6:49 AM, Andrew Fildes wrote:
> I prefer to keep it active, as in, "Who defenestrated that slave."
> I did manage to sneak it into an incident report at school when I
> specified that student A, for his own amusement, defenestrated student
> B. The co-ordinator complained that he'd rather not have to use a
> dictionary when reading reports. I replied that as a teacher of
> English Literature, he should be familiar with the verb.
> Up north where I was born, there was no time for Latinate niceties.
> The stock suggestion at the commencement of a serious disagreement
> was - "Choose thi' winder."
> Andrew Fildes
> afildes@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
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