PLANNING AHEAD

What’s so funny about this? This is just one of those jokes that popped into my head during a kitchen conversation with my wife. She mentioned something about the importance of planning ahead. It suddenly hit me that there could be a serious double meaning imbedded in that phrase, depending on how you pronounced it and stressed the words. The word “head” has many meanings; one of the most interesting is “toilet.” It comes from the fact that toilets on ships are called heads because they used to be placed at the head or bow of the ship. This is because sailing ships did not sail directly into the wind. Rather they’d sail at an angle to the wind causing the wind to blow the smell from the head or toilet out over the water rather than over the ship. Also their location at the bow, near the water line could allow for wave action to wash the contents away. These days, “head” has become a generic euphemism for any toilet, not just that of a ship. In the cartoon we see a woman planning to dea