ROSEMARY SNIFFINGS

After publishing the article SNIFF ROSEMARY (see here), I have had several readers make amusing remarks, but the best one happened yesterday. A friend went with my husband and me to the Air Force Museum; our friend wanted to see President Kennedy's "Air Force One" and I said I'd like to see MY plane, the B1-B.

As we had to wait for a shuttle to take us to see JFK's plane; we decided to have lunch; while waiting for lunch to be served, I was trying to tell an incident about our friend Tim, but for some strange reason, I kept saying "Tom" rather than "Tim".

After several times of reversing the names, our friend asked, in a loud voice, "Is there anyone here named Rosemary?" The hostess heard him and answered, "My mother's name was Rosemary." Our friend said, sotto voce, "Bring her over so Sue can sniff her!" We had to explain the reference about Rosemary. She said, "I'll see if we have any in the spices in the kitchen!"

Later, checking in for the JFK exhibit at the Museum, one of the volunteers was an elderly woman named Rosemary. Our friend said, "Come on over here, Rosemary, you can help prevent Alzheimer's!" Naturally, we had to explain the reference about rosemary to her. She said that she used a lot of rosemary in her cooking, but our friend concluded that Rosemary didn't "get" it and said she should probably have started sniffing rosemary earlier in her life.