Ban

Don't you just love that word. It has so many different applications. It's supposed to mean that something is forbidden, but if you change the ending or the beginning, it means so much more. In fact, I did a quick tally of words in my pocket Collins dictionary and found 31 words using ban as their root. Imagine it. 31 things that technically are forbidden, including, by the way the bank, a banquet and a band. So if you fall and scrape your knee, technically you can't put anything on it because a BANdaid is forbidden. What's great for those of us who have weight issues is that all BANquets are BANished, so not only can we not overeat, but there would be nothing to eat when we got there. Which of course, leads us to marriage. In many religions they post the BANns of a couple getting married. This implies that the couple is really forbidden to get married. Maybe that's not such a bad thing given how some marriages turn out. So if you stick something on the end of the word (a suffix) like ban you come up with all kinds of interesting things like the above mentioned band. You can actually listen to a group of people doing something forbidden that you can actually enjoy. Then if you stick something on the beginning (prefix) there is the taliban, a group of notorious criminals bound and determined to make all our lives miserable. Why? I still haven't figured it out, but some day I will. Let's break down their name. Tal has something to do with a body part or something put on a body (talcum powder being a good example), i is i, and ban we've already discussed. So theoretically they are have a body of things forbidden. This creates all sorts of images in this mind, none of them I'd care to find out about, wich raises the question: What are they really like under their clothes? Guess we can all find out now through the handy-dandy body scanners we'll all be subjected to at airports.
Which reminds me, if they are going to scan us for banned objects, can they also perform a mamogram, check prostrates and do vein and artery checks for blockages at the same time? Would make perfect sense to me, save a lot of money in health care/diagnosis and you can get on the plane knowing you are in perfect health as well as safe. On the other hand, I'm not sure about the logic of banning books that you want to take with you for reading material. I can however hear thousands of students cheering because they can't take their school work with them. I can hear the excuses now: "I couldn't get my work done miss because the airport security wouldn't let me on with my textbook." or "I would have had my work done, except security confiscated all my school books." Puts a whole new twist on to the whole dog-ate-my-homework excuse. Welcome to the world of technology.