Santa Cruz Sentinel from Santa Cruz, California • Page 25

Section Sentinel Sept. 7, 1993 IaylmnG Ann Landers, Page 3 Comics, Page 4 Business, Page 5 HH A III Chevy Chase pins the late-night club Page 2 Wally Trabing What they really meant I HAVE A liking for stirring remarks. They taunt the brain with bravado. President Bush's Gulf desert war did not produce one, unless it was: "Our troops did not want for food. They ate the sandwiches there!" But U.S.

military history is chock full of chest-pounding messages and commands uttered at critical moments. Some are not remembered, such as the emotional query by a Col. Reginald Dork, uttered in the heat of battle. He screamed: "Where Jhe devil's my laundry?" The aides sent the query to Paris by carrier pigeon during World War I. As I will say a couple of times in this piece, I thinly suspect that some of the famous words have been twisted to fit the heroic moment.

For example, "Nuts!" is well recorded in war annals as the reply from Gen. Anthony McAuliffe to a request by the Germans to surrender during WWII. It still crops up occasionally. A war needs catchy phrases. But I have it on not-bad authority that actually the general was eating breakfast by his tent at the time and spilled his bowl of mush down the front of his last clean uniform just as the request by the enemy was put to him.

Another quote a trifle older is: "The die is cast," uttered by Julius Caesar around 114 B.C. This has come down through the ages via John Bartlett's "Familiar Quotations." John has been around a long time. But I staunchly favor the report that instead of referring to a military situation, it was uttered in his Roman palace game room. The official scribe, listening for every scrap of utterance by the great man, caught this during a game of craps. I don't recall any great statements emerging from Vietnam.

Oh, several presidents said, "If elected I will end the war in Indochina," but no one paid much attention. It didn't catch on. What has brightened the corner of my mind is the restless notion that many more military lines which have endured, lo these many years, were not quoted true-blue and do not tell the full story. For example, "I have not begun to fight" has long been around to instill the patriotic fever in future warriors. I suspect now, however, that what John Paul Jones really said, as the ship Bonhomie Richard pulled up alongside a British man-o-war in 1797, was: "I have not begun to fight, so don't all you hands get excited.

I wanna see what those British cats are aimin' to do with them long swords. Man, they sure look Or, Admiral Farragut's dramatic, "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!" Well, what with cannons going off and officers yelling, "Here comes another one, admiral," the utterance by the admiral might easily have become garbled. I am inclined to think that he had more sense, and actually yelled: "Damn those torpedoes, turn around and full speed ahead." Another one I have often thought about is Admiral Dewey's "You may fire when ready, Gridley," shouted in 1893 while fighting the Spanish in Manila Bay. Well, this is a 1-i-t-t-l-e too pat for me. It gives too much responsibility to Gridley who, if I know my Gridleys, had more of a roving eye than an itchy trigger finger.

What I think really took place on that foggy morning was: "You may fire when ready, Gridley." "My name Phyllis, sir." "Where the deuce is "He's down in the galley, sir, making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, sir. He stowed me away four days ago and I'm hungry." "Why me! Why always me!" "All right, you may fire when ready, Phyllis!" These utterances by admirals and generals and statesmen may serve a purpose in dressing up history books, but there still exists, in the memories of the serviceman, proclamations more poignantly zeroed to the nature of war. I can vouch for one. As I recall, it was made by a blond PX clerk at Craig Field, near Selma, Ala. She said: "What kind of a girl do you think I am, Wally Trabing's column appears Sunday through Wednesday in Bay Living.

-v jK Kids aspire to images of ultra-thin models and slim superstars. that thin is in trickles down to 'I'm struck by how young and intent the girls are. It starts with little dieting clubs in elementary school to see who can eat the Caroline Adams Miller, president of the Foundation for Education and Eating Disorders thesda, Md. "It starts with little dieting clubs in elementary school to see who can eat the least. It's so common I'm not even shocked any more." In a study conducted by the Center for Child and Adolescent Obesity at the University of California, San Francisco, 80 percent of fourth-graders claimed to be on diets.

A separate study published in the journal Pediatrics found that few children in grades 3 through 6 were actually overweight, but 45 percent wanted to slim down and 37 percent had dieted. While some parents dismiss their child's fat fixation as a phase, experts say it can presage a serious problem. Pediatricians, child counselors and psychiatrists report treating more children with the eating disorders anorexia nervosa and bulimia. Of the estimated 8 million eating-disorder patients in the United States, clinicians aren't sure how many are children, but some are as young as 5 and 6. And although 90 percent are girls, they in: creasingly treat boys, such as the 10-year-old who was hospitalized after he dropped from a weight of 75 to 55 pounds "because he thought his stomach stuck out." Why are so many children panicked and insecure about their bodies? For the same reasons adults are, says Leigh Cohn, editor of Eating Disorders Journal of Treatment and Prevention.

"It's a combination of a dysfunctional culture and an overemphasis on thinness. If you're a large child, there's a stigma from grade one." The message By LAURIE LUCAS Ottaway News Service TOO FAT. Too fat. Laura Connell is only 10 years old, but that's how she perceives the 80 pounds on her 5-foot frame. After all, many of her fifth-grade classmates fret about flab.

Some of the heavier kids are "really nice," she says, "but I wouldn't want to look like them." What she wants to look like is 20 pounds thinner. Laura's obsession with fat concerns her mother, Cookie Connell of Riverside. "She just wants salad with oil and vinegar, that's all." Hardly a couch potato, Laura gets plenty of exercise, swimming two miles a day with the swim team. "I tell her she's beautiful, she's not fat," says Connell. "I tell her I wish I would have looked like that at her age." There's nothing new about this country's infatuation with the body beautiful.

But today, experts and horrified parents see the preoccupation with pounds trickling down to playgrounds. "I'm struck by how young and intent the girls are," says Caroline Adams Miller, president of FEED, the Foundation for Education and Eating Disorders in Be- Arthritis The Arthritis Self-Help Course, sponsored by the Arthritis Foundation and the Stanford Arthritis Center, will be offered at Watsonville Community Hospital starting Sept. 7. The six-week course provides information on arthritis, its medications and the latest in exercise and pain management techniques. Cost is $15 and waivers are available, and you can register at the first class.

For more information, call 475-3269. Osteoporosis support group will meet A newly formed support group for the playground Kids may be victims of a "cultural tyranny of slenderness" perpetuated by media-driven images: magazines with waiflike models; numerous weight-loss commercials; parents with their own anti-fat fetishes; TV shows with physically flawless actors. To reverse this disturbing trend, experts say that parents must counteract society's unrealistic role models and help children accept and love their individual bodies. They advise parents to talk to kids about dieting and food just as they would about drugs and sex. Pediatricians do worry that many of the nation's children are overweight from consuming too many hours of television and too much junk food.

But they strongly advise against children skipping meals or severely curtailing calories. Instead, families should switch to healthy foods and eating habits. Parents are advised to avoid disparaging comments about their own or their children's weight. If a child tends to be plump, limit TV watching and encourage exercise. "Chronic dieting, crash dieting and fasting contribute to obesity," says Karen Blatchley, a registered dietitian.

"And they don't address the issues causing a child to overeat." swimming's movements to be a worthwhile training aid. The muscle training that swimmers do just by practicing their swimming is probably more to the point, said researcher David L. Costill of Ball State University in Muncie, Ind. "The training you do in the water is maximizing your strength in the water," Costill said. The report appears in the American College of Sports Medicine's journal, Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise.

From Sentinel staff and wire services self help course offered locally a normal life through early detection, treatment and proper diet. There is no cost to attend. The next series is from Oct. 1-22 from p.m. in the Freedom East Room at Watsonville Community Hospital.

Space is limited. For more information, call 761-5618. Lifting weights may not make a swimmer faster Bigger muscles won't necessarily haul a good swimmer through the water faster. Even though many swimmers lift weights, one study indicates that strength training isn't focused enough on Health digest "Women Under Sixty With Osteoporosis," will meet at 5:15 p.m. Monday at 2126 Soquel Santa Cruz.

RSVP is requested at 423-0323. Hospital offers living with diabetes series Watsonville Community Hospital is offering a 4 week multi-disciplinary series to teach people with diabetes how to live.