Maroons

[ladyofastolat]

Every Armistice Day, the two minute silence is announced by the firing of maroons. Every Armistice Day, I therefore spend most of the 2 minute silence with thought processes that go something like this: "Maroon. I've looked it up before. I looked it up last year, and the year before. Now, what did I discover? It's not related to "maroon" as in "abandon on a desert island"; I remember that much. It was somehow related to the colour, I think, which comes from the French for chestnuts. But why? What have fireworks got to do with chestnuts? I must... Oh, two minute silence. Supposed to be thinking solemn thoughts. Let's contemplate... Explosions! Chestnuts popping on an open fire! Maybe that's the link! Must... Oh. Can't. Can't google it at the moment. Still supposed to be thinking... Oh. There goes that maroon again. The silence is over."

I feel rather guilty about this. I feel that - having researched "maroon" yet again, and still found no very convincing answer (but having discovered en route that "maroon" (as in abandon) and "Seminole" are linked) - I ought to go and hide in the stationery cupboard (having first researched the etymology of all stationery items I'm likely to encounter there) and think solemn, solitary Armisticey thoughts for 2 minutes, just to make up for my failure at 11 o'clock.

Comments

[bunn.livejournal.com]

If it helps, I don't think I have ever once managed to spend the Armistice 2 minutes thinking appropriate solemn thoughts. There's something about being given 2 specific minutes to think about something specific that makes the task, in my opinion, entirely impossible.

I once had the thought 'you know, this is like if someone asks you to NOT think about a hippopotamus for two minutes'

Now I usually spend those two minutes tormented by uninvited hippos.

[ylla.livejournal.com]

Oh no! I have never thought that before...

[bunn.livejournal.com]

... what an appropriate icon!

[ylla.livejournal.com]

It's supposed to be a Master and Commander one, but it comes in useful for so many things :)

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

So next year, I will spend the two minutes tormented with images of maroon coloured hippos struggling to survive when marooned on a desert island. A year will have gone by, and I won't remember WHY the hippos have crept in, but they'll still be there. :-D

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Don't forget to have them eating macaroons...

[leesa_perrie]

Oh yes, trying to be good and think solemn thoughts for 2 mins is hard. I suspect many a person's thoughts wander during the silence! And really, if someone told me it started by the firing of maroons, I'd be somewhat confused!!

Though at least it's not macaroons!! Which is where my mind first went when reading maroon for some reason. I'm blaming The Great British Bake Off for that one...

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

I do wonder how many people really DO spend the 2 minute silence thinking solemn thoughts. If you're at a Remembrance Service, and have had an hour of solemn readings and hymns, then perhaps most people do. But if you're in a supermarket when the announcement of the silence comes over the tannoy, then I expect that a lot of people stop only because it's expected of them and they don't want to get tutted at, and spend the two minutes thinking about their shopping list.

[themis1.livejournal.com]

I once spent the entire 2 minutes quietly boggling over the fact I was standing next to my German friend, who was presumably thinking about a completely different set of dead people to the ones I was thinking about. It's never been quite the same since.

[puddleshark.livejournal.com]

There are worse lapses...

One of my work colleagues is German, and told us that where she comes from in Germany, 11 o'clock on the eleventh of the eleventh is the start of carnival season, when they traditionally greet each other with a loud 'HALLO!' and a wave.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

Interesting! I had to look this one up, to find out if there was a link - i.e. whether that time and date was chosen for Armistice Day because it already had significance in Germany. I discovered loads of interesting facts about the significance of the number 11 and the observance of the day in various countries, but the general conclusion was "it's just a coincidence."

[conuly]

If it makes you feel better, my yearly 11/11 guilt trip is "Have you remembered to call your grandmother to wish her a happy birthday? No? Well, she's not getting any younger! She's in her 90s, she'll be dead soon!"

(If by "soon" we mean "sometime before the age of 110", that is. It's not even a little unusual for people in her family to make it to 100, even the ones who got cancer, which is an awful lot of them. I'm assured that the cancer isn't hereditary, that it's related to Chernobyl clouds drifting over Belgium, but how do we know that?)

[pellegrina.livejournal.com]

My thought process was "It's 11. I am doing the 2 minute silence. I am looking out the window at the school boys doing the 2 minute silence. I am being silent, doing the 2 minute silence. I wonder if I am supposed to face any particular direction as everyone else is facing the same way. I am facing west. Towards Númenor, that'll do won't it? I am doing the 2 minute silence. Oh heck, I am supposed to be thinking solemn remembrance thoughts. The fallen in war. War is bad. Oh, everyone's finished now."