Agricola.....

......That’s Latin for farmer according to my [then] eighty-five year old father. So what you say?

Well, is it important to fill your life with good memories? Especially the childhood variety. Here’s the story. My 15 year-old nephew [he is now 22 year-old college senior] is cramming for a Latin exam and he is stumped by a few of the 100 words assigned by his teacher for an upcoming quiz. I am able, with the help of an enormous dictionary, to help him out with all but one and that is the word agricola. I guess it has something to do with agriculture (am I a genius or what?). I next suggest he call Pop-Pop who is a retired math and science teacher, lifelong voracious reader, and trivia whiz. Instead, I make the call. It goes like this. What’s agricola mean in Latin? The unhesitating response is farmer. I tell him to call his grandson with that information. He does.

Fast forward a couple days and I ask the nephew how the quiz went. He says the quiz had 20 words and one was agricola. And he was the only one in the class who got that right. I suggest he will never forget the meaning for agricola and who he got it from.