Untitled Document

And Now it’s Called a Frindle

What you are about to read can all be found in my full report to the Dictionary Standards Board.
And please remember. I don’t make this stuff up. I just report the facts.

On March 23, 2035, the monthly updated Digital Dictionary of the English Language —the DDEL— was ready to roll down the informataion highway into the computer retreival systems of every school, home, university, business, and library in the known universe. I was in my office module at home when something triggered the automatic vari-sensor, and this message blinked on my datascreen:
New Word Alert.

The word was frindle. Here’s the entry that set off the alarm.

frin•dle (frin‘ dl). n. 1. an implement used to make permanent marks on a writing material. (origin unknown) see pen.

And when I keyed in the word pen, this came up.

pen (pên). n. archaic 1. a frindle (see).

I could hardly breathe, almost in shock. You see, pen is one of those solid words that folks in the dictionary business learn to count on. It goes back a thousand years to late Latin. It has a wonderfully clear and traceable ancestry and family tree. It’s just a darn good word. Pen archaic? Pushed out of common usage by frindle? How?!
I suspected foul play. Perhaps it was a hoax, a vicious, nasty trick by some clever computer hacker, some hater of culture and standards, some disgusting revisionist.
Origin unknown? Not for long, pal. Dave Allen, certified lexicographer, was on the case.

Test number 1
As I walked across the courtyard from my home to the shopping mall, I tried to remember the last time I bought a pen. I couldn’t. I could remember using one to sign my name when I bought my house six years ago, but like everyone else I know, I use my keyboard for writing, and my datacorder for note taking. It had been at least 10 years since I had really needed a pen for regular use.
So I walked into a shopping module at the Unimall, and asked for one.
The clerk looked up from his Toonscreen, and gave me a blank look. “Whah?”
“A PEN,” I said, very clearly, with emphasis on the P and the N. It’s a hard word to mess up. The clerk continued to squint and tilt his head at me, as I said it three or four more times. So finally I pointed to the plastic tub of ballpoints behind him, and said, “One of those.”
“Oh. Frindle. Why dincha say?”
The kid held up the CashVoicer, I said, “Dave Allen. Seventy-eight cents,”
the Voicer replied “Approved,” and I left holding onto my new frindle.
So frindle wasn’t a hoax. But it still deserved a full investigation—and it was going to get it.

Test Number 2
My next stop was the Audit Center. Since 1990 the EDDL team has tracked word usage electronically. When a new word is used in any of 16,000 different newspapers, magazines, newsletters, radio, or TV programs, or if a word is used on any of the fax systems or information retrievers on the National Communications Network, the use is captured, dated, the origin is noted—sometimes a person’s name, sometime a company name, sometimes just the name of a town or state. And all this information goes into a huge data base in a supercomputer at the Audit Center. It monitors the use of new words, and lets a human know when a word has gotten to a point in usage where it deserves its own entry in the dictionary. That’s what had caused the New Word Alert to flash on my screen.

At home again in my office module, I sat at my workstation in the, entered my password to access the computer at the Audit Center, and ran a search.
Subject: frindle.

There was a delay of almost 2 seconds. Very unusual.
It meant that there was a huge file on this word. It came up and flashed about 200 screenfuls of data at me. I flipped back to the very first entry. Bingo.

3/9/96 1420 fax - Union Pen Cor Bos MA to Sch Dis 1, Lewiston, ME. ref: 4 grs impr frindles, Lincoln El Sch

The jumble of letters and numbers on my screen meant this: One afternoon in March of 1996, someone at Union Pen Corporation did not understand when an order came in for four big boxes of imprinted frindles. They sent a fax back to Lewiston to ask for clarification, and the WordScan system caught the new word as the fax flew through the National Network.
Clarification. Yes, that was the right word. By 10:30 the next morning I was in Lewiston.

Witness Number One
Thomas Altman had been principal of Lincoln School in 1996. Retired now and living on a farm three miles out of town, Mr. Altman was very helpful.
“Oh yes, frindle. It was quite a battle there for a while. It was the kids, you know. They just started calling pens frindles. We tried to put a stop to it, but kids talk a lot more than teachers do, and it wasn’t long before we just gave up. Darndest thing I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen some doozies! Started in 1992 or 1993. That fax you mentioned from the pen company, that was in 1996. By then, the whole town was using frindles, and half the state knew what it meant. You take 260 kids in a school, and then you add up all the people and family they talk to, and then all the people they talk to— it just keeps going.”
Mr. Altman had it exactly right. “Yes,” I said, “in my business, we call it dispersion—the way a word spreads. The pen supply company was Boston, and the word hadn’t hit them yet. And when they sent the fax back to ask what it meant, the monitoring system spotted the word being used for the first time.” I paused, then asked, “Mr. Altman, are there any other teachers living in this area from those days who might be able to shed more light on this for me?”
Without any hesitation he said, “Alison Granger lives in town with her daughter and her family. When this thing started up, she was the teacher who led the loyal opposition. And her daughter, Jenny, she was there at the school in fifth grade the year it all started. You should be ready to get an earful.”
He punched the name into the keypad on the phone, and the address and phone number appeared instantly on the display screen.
“Mr. Altman, you’ve been a big help. I’ll let you know what I find out.” We shook hands, and he showed me to the door. As I loaded the address into the navigator unit on my dashboard, I felt pretty good. There was a trail, and I was on it.

Witness pro, Witness con
Mrs. Granger met me at the door. She did not look like a person who had retired 20 years ago. Her eyes were bright, peircing, and her handshake was strong. As she looked me over, I felt like I was about to get a homework assignment, or perhaps be sent to Mr. Altman’s office. Once a teacher, always a teacher.
“Mr. Allen, I am so glad you called. Someone really should get to the bottom of this. It has been bothering me now for almost 40 years, and I still don’t know what to make of it. Why, it only seems like yesterday that I heard that word for the first time.
“Can you recall anything about that first time? Any details?”
“Of course I can,” she snapped. “It was a fifth grade class, and I had about 18 boys and 6 girls. Big trouble. The boys weren’t bad, just squirrely and very smart. And no matter how I arranged the seats, there were never enough girls to really break up the silly stuff they were always trying to do. I had just begun a class when Jake Atkinson raised his hand and said, sweet as could be, ‘Mrs. Granger, I forgot my frindle.’ And before I could say a thing, his friend, John Rappell, pipes up right out loud and says, ‘I have an extra one you can borrow.’ Then that rascal John made a big show of rooting through his backpack looking for something until everyone in the class was watching. Then he pulled out a pen, and made another big show of tossing it to Jake three rows away. Jake missed the throw, and made another big show of crawling around on the floor to find it.”
I interrupted. “So you think they were acting this out?”
She looked at me and raised one eyebrow. “Mr. Allen, no student has ever fooled me about anything. Those two boys knew exactly what they were doing.” I believed her.
There was an awkward silence while I thought about this, and while she decided whether or not I was just another little troublemaker. Luckily, her daughter, Jenny, arrived home from work with her three-year-old son.
“Jennifer,” said Mrs Granger, “Meet Mr. Allen. He’s come to investigate about that phony word for pen that you and your friends started using.”
Jenny smiled at me, and then said to her mother with her eyes open wide and just a trace of humor in her voice, “Pen? Pen? what does that mean? Oh, yes...I remember, frindle.” Her mother was not amused. Jenny, on the other hand, seemed very amused, and I could see that these two had discussed this many times. Jenny used a frindle, and her mother still wrote with a pen.
Mrs. Granger stood up. “If you’ll excuse me, Mr. Allen, I think I shall make us all some woogla. Would you like some?”
I was confused. “Woogla? Well, ...ssure. Whatever you’re having.”
Mrs.Granger smiled sweetly at me and then made a little face at Jenny as she said, “Oh. You probably don’t know that my grandson and I have made up a new word for tea. We call it woogla now. Aren’t we cute??” Sarcasm in people over 70 is not a pretty sight. “Come along Samuel,” she said to Jenny’s little boy. She took him by the hand. “Come with Grandma to kitchen and we shall make some woogla for the nice man.” She swept little Samuel off to the kitchen, and then there was a lot of rattling china and banging of the teakettle from out there.
Her daughter said, “Please don’t mind Mom. She still can’t stand it that all her students and every other kid in the school defied her. When everyone started using the new word, she was furious. She thought it was disrespectful or something. But for us, it was just a fad, something different—something of our own. It turned into a big power struggle. Mrs. Granger announced that anyone who called a pen a frindle would have to stay after school and write “I am writing this punishment with a pen.”a hundred times. But that just made everyone want to use the word even more, and staying after school with “The Lone Granger” got to be a badge of honor. One day every kid in the fifth grade asked her if she had an extra frindle. And every kid stayed after school. We filled her room and spilled out into the hallway. The principal had to stay after school to help her keep everyone under control, and they had to arrange a special bus to get all the kids home. There were more than 70 of us. And the next day, we all did it again, and so did half of the kids in the rest of the school, over a hundred and fifty kids. Parents were calling to complain, and then the school board got involved. And then it made the local papers, and that’s when Mom finally gave up. By trying to fight it, she had only made it more popular than ever. Once it was written about in the paper, it jumped to the junior high and the high school almost overnight. It was very exciting in a secret kind of way. Then all the stores that sell school supplies to kids started advertising frindles instead of pens, and the rest is history. And to this day, Mom still gets mad about it. It was pretty tough for me for a while. Mom was sure I knew all about it. She thought I was in on starting it.”
“And were you?” I asked, trying not to sound too eager.
“No, but I wish I had been.”
“Do you have any idea who might have started it?”
She looked at me suspiciously. “Why do you want to know all this? Are you trying to turn this around too? Like my mother?”
That stopped me in my tracks. “Well, I guess t;hat’s how I felt yesterday. You see, I work for the agency that publishes the dictionary. And yesterday was the first time I ever heard of the word frindle. It was just a shock, I guess. And at first, I did kind of feel angry, sort of like your mom. But really, now I just want to know the facts. I’d like to be able to know exactly how this happened. There are not many words in any language that can be traced to a single source. I just want to know the truth.”
It was a good speech, a true speech, and Jenny smiled. “It’s really is pretty amazing, isn’t it. You and I were probably in grade school at about the same time. I’ve been using a frindle for almost 40 years, and you grew up and started working on the dictionary, and until yesterday, you didn’t know a thing about my favorite word.” She paused, as if making a decision. Then she said, “As near as I can remember, there were three boys and two girls who really started this thing.”
“Jake and John?” I asked. “Your mother remembered an incident in her class.”
She nodded, “And Nick and Andrea and Jean. Whenever there was a stir about that word, one of those kids was always in the middle of it.
“Do you remember any last names? Your mother already gave me John’s and Jake’s.”
“Yes. Nick Sheldon, Andrea James, and Jean Mehaffey. Together those five could have figured out how to do anything. Lots of smarts.”
“Do you have any class pictures? I know this is pushing it, but any little clue could be helpful.”
“You’ll have to ask my mom. She’s the packrat. Teachers save everything. I’m a thrower, she’s a saver.”

The Plotters
Tea—or woogla—arrived. Mrs. Granger seemed in a better mood. She smiled at me and patted her daughter’s shoulder after putting down the tray. “I know I shouldn’t let this bother me, and I know how silly it all is. And when I think of it all, I really do admire the cleverness and the courage of those little bandits. Such a lot of fuss! They really had me going, as I’m sure Jenny has told you.”
Jenny blushed, and I could see there was plenty of real love between these two. “Jenny tells me that you may have a photo of the fifth graders from 1992. I’d like to look at it, if that’s possible.”
“Jenny, you pour the tea, and Samuel, give Mr. Allen a cookie. I’ll just be a moment.” And she walked briskly up the stairs. Two minutes later she was seated beside me on the sofa with a file folder marked 1992. And she leafed through it to find two photographs.
“This is my homeroom, and this is Mr. Byrne’s class. We split the fifth grade. He taught science and combined social studies and reading, I taught English and math. It was an odd split, but it suited us. The kids split up into four groups, and we had them go back and forth. It was kind of like changing classes, and we hoped that it would get them ready for junior high.”
While she talked, I looked at the class pictures. And at the teachers. What a study in contrasts. Mrs. Granger’s class was lined up by height in front of a bulletin board that featured an exhibit on penmanship and the 12’s times table. Very precise. Very orderly. Very tight. Everyone stood at attention, no one blinked, no one made a face. And on the left, in a pale pleated dress, stood Mrs. Granger, looking almost exactly like the woman sitting next to me.
Mr. Byrne’s students were sprawled and spread around on a carpet in the back of a room that was a jumble of exhibits and displays and hanging artwork. Paper mache heads of the Presidents, DNA molecules, and a mobile that looked like it was made of car and motorcycle pistons hung above the group. The kids sat in clusters, relaxed, among friends. And in the middle, looking a little bleary eyed, sat Mr. Byrne. His dark hair was tousled, and he was wearing blue jeans, sneakers, and white hooded sweatshirt.
“And where are Andrea and Jean and Jake and Nick and John?” I asked. Mrs. Granger pointed to a group of kids clustered at one end of Mr. Byrne’s rug. Five kids, all together. All smiling. Pals.
I held the picture up closer to my face, looking at their faces. Jenny was right. Bright. Then I looked again. All five of them had struck the same little pose. Each looked straight at the camera. Each had one hand held below the chin, and each one had the same expression around the mouth. I got the picture right up close to my eyes, and squinted. And all at once I knew. In the fingers below the chin three boys and two girls each held a small object. And when the shutter clicked, they didn’t say “Cheeese.” They said “Frindle.”

A big reuniion at the end. A new pledge. A new oath. A presentation to the Lone Granger. A fancy Pen.

Afterword.. the year is 2070. Young Fred sat at his screen at EDEL New Word Alert. Pen. See Frindle. How could this happen? Frindle? replaced by an archaic word like Pen? H:e woudl have to get to the bottom of this.

“I think I have an extra one, I mean, I told my mom to get me three or four. I’m sure I had an extra one in here yesterday, but I must have taken it...Wait, ...yeah, here it is.”
And then John would make a big show of throwing it over to Jake,
and Jake would miss it on purpose, and then make a big show of finding it.
They nearly had to stay after school for making such a scene,
but Mrs. Granger and every kid in the class got the message loud and clear.
That black plastic thing that Jake borrowed from John had a funny name...
a different name...a new name—Frindle.

I got his name from a the district
finally tracks down Nick himself. Nick is now a systems engineer in the digital art department at BERM, the biggest entertainment software company on Earth. His job was to manage, catalog, and digitize all the artwork ever created so they could be displayed on the wide screen µZM system.

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