Pay Out the Kazoo

by Tom Shafer

April 8, 2018

So I’m half-paying attention to the evening news feeding from Dayton, Ohio, when I catch an interview with a little old lady who is being asked about gas prices ticking up because the cost of oil is rising.  She finishes the story by saying, “It’s always the little people who have to pay out the kazoo.” 

Of course, I chuckle, then immediately fall back on a standard question I would love to ask every television producer/interviewer: “Do you go out of your way to find people who will create these TV moments, or is it truly by chance?” 

No matter where you travel in the country, every evening news broadcast is punctuated by these people and these moments and these words: “then I seen this man . . . his hand was broke . . . the motorsickle was all tore up . . .” 

So I know you’re thinking, ‘This dude is a dandy.  I hate dandies.’  Well, I may or may not be a dandy, but I AM a former language arts teacher who values words, oral and written.  And the more I thought about that cute little lady, the more I realized that perhaps she chose the word “kazoo” because she didn’t like the word that traditionally finishes that quote.  Maybe it was her religious teachings that prompted “kazoo.”  After all, I submit that more than a few of you do not know what a “wazoo” is.  Anus if you do, you just saw the definition at the beginning of this sentence.  Now you know the rest of the story . . .

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