Have flies, will swat

The flyswatter has been around almost as long as flies have, and has proven to be an effective solution for breaking delicate objects in one's home while one swats at pesky flies and other insects, who generally escape unscathed.

The modern flyswatter was apparently invented in the early 1900s, when a doctor in Kansas, wishing to stir up people's passions against flies because they spread disease, formed the rallying cry of "Swat the fly!" Soon thereafter a schoolteacher named Frank invented the fly bat, which consisted of a yardstick and a piece of screen. We can surmise that schoolteacher Frank was quite familiar with objects whose purpose was to inflict pain and injury on another, and perhaps created his "fly bat" more with unruly students in mind than insects, but nevertheless the invention took off. The doctor -- with a medical person's flair for marketing -- renamed it the insectus mortalis apparatus. No, really, he called it the flyswatter.

I highly recommend owning more than one flyswatter, because it is something you do not want to have to search for in your hour of need. You can, of course, substitute some other implement that roughly resembles the flyswatter, such as an AK47, or a shoe, provided the shoe belongs to someone other than you. We personally have about 17 flyswatters in our home, although I am sure we used to have more, some of which were probably carried away on the shoulders of little determined bands of ants.

It did not take us long after moving into our home to figure out that we needed a doomsday supply of flyswatters. With just one, whenever we saw a bug, by the time we would run up (or down) a treacherous flight of stairs, retrieve the flyswatter and run back down (or up), the bug would be long gone, its laughter trailing after it. The bugs would leave little coded messages for each other, like some sort of Bug Underground Railroad, that roughly translated to: SLOW RESPONSE TIME. HOUSEHOLD LACKS FLYSWATTER ON EACH FLOOR. DOES HAVE SHOES ON EACH FLOOR, BUT FEMALE LOATHE TO USE THEM AS WEAPONS.

And so I headed to Target, that venerable purveyor of everything -- except flyswatters, as it turned out -- to stock up. Unable to locate any, I did locate an employee, who turned out to be unfamiliar with the word "flyswatter," as well as with many other words in English with which I attempted to explain what a flyswatter was.

Now, Wikipedia describes the flyswatter as a "small rectangular sheet of lightweight, flexible, vented material" that is "attached to a lightweight wire or plastic handle." This is EXACTLY how I described what I was looking for to the Target employee. Well, except for the small rectangular sheet part. And the lightweight, flexible, vented material part. And...the lightweight wire or plastic handle part. I believe the actual words I used were "stick" and "smack." But she totally should have understood what I was describing.

So, if you are trying to describe a flyswatter to an individual who apparently has never heard the rallying cry "Swat the fly," I recommend the liberal use of gestures and props, including actual bugs so that you can act out how you wish to use the flyswatter in conjunction with the bugs. Or possibly with the employee.