Does anyone still call a good friend "My chum?" If you walked up and said "Hello, Old Chum!" would the person being addressed be flattered or furious? I grew up around a river and a lake. When people saw me coming and said "Hey, Chum" they probably meant I smelled like bait or fish-bits. The word "chum" supposedly comes from around 1684. Chum was an alternate spelling for cham. Does that clear it up? It's like when you pull into a gas station and ask "Can you tell me where Stinkleyville is?" "Oh, sure. That's right outside East Nub Township." Cham is short for chamber-mate. That's what they used to call room-mates in the 1600s, I guess. So, an old Cham became an old Chum. Or maybe everybody at school smelled like a carp in the 1600s. I've visited our son's residence hall at college and, frankly, something was fishy there, too.

Well, if that's a chum...what's a chumby? According to the story on Wednesday morning's FirstNews, a Chumby is a tiny device that is part alarm clock and part computer. It has a touchscreen and wireless Internet. You can create your own morning wake-up news program. Speaking as something of an expert on alarm clocks, let me say, this seems like a lot of hullabaloo just to get someone going in the morning. I'm not talking about the dance program from the 60s. I'm talking about an uproar! The word, hullabaloo, comes from old England. Apparently, a rowdy chamber-mate could cause quite a hullabaloo! I just don't think we need all that techno-stuff to wake up in the morning.

I have five alarm clocks. Two are old-fashioned clocks with numbers and hands...which means my children can't use them to tell time. These two go off, first. Then, my clock radio turns on. It is tuned to an oldies station. Well, it used to be oldies. Now, it plays music from my young adulthood which means it can't possibly be "OLDIES!" I barely hear the first note before I hit snooze. Not long after Neil Diamond croons "Cracklin'...." the first of two alarms set on my cell-phone rings. It is set to Merle Haggard singing "No one could steer me right but Mama tried. Mama tried." (Our daughter, Samantha, thought that was the perfect ringer for me.) Finally, some sort of marching music, as played by tiny little flea-like musicians, comes out of my phone. That's what it takes to get me out of bed and into work. Adding a computer screen and on-line capability would be of no help. This Chumby would be no chum of mine.

Maybe Chumby is not a take-off on the word chum, at all. Maybe it's based on Gumby! A friendly, flexible pal. Well, if it's meant to help you get moving first thing in the morning, they'd best not introduce anything based on Gumby's side-kick. The last thing most of us need, in the morning, is an excuse to be Pokey.