What are Salad Days?

 

That is a very good question, George. My first thought is that they are the worst days of the month on the grade-school cafeteria schedule. After all, who in their right mind would look forward to a plate of greens after a week of canned spaghetti, limp frozen cheese pizza, stale-bun hot dogs and fish sticks (or "fish dicks", as we called them with a sixth-grade snicker)?

On a side note, in grade school in the early 1970's, "lunch tickets" were purchased for the week or month and we were issued little punch cards that were diligently punched by hair-netted lunch-ladies as we were processed through the lunch line. Or a kid could pay with cash, had he not had the foresight to pester his parents for a check or cash for the ticket. As hooligans, we would crumple the ticket over and over again until it had the consistency of a dishrag and was probably half its original size. When presented with these abominations, lunch ladies would invariably scowl or scold, depending on their mood. Even if they had gone through the same ritual the day before. We got a great kick out of seeing who could brandish the most distressed lunch card. You can do the same thing with a dollar bill and get the same reaction from your local grocer. Er, I've heard... But I digress.

With the able assistance of the "Just Ask Jerry Research Laboratory, Memorial Library and Family Hayride" staff, I was able to come up with a more appetizing answer to the question "what are salad days?".  According to Wikipedia, the Repository of All Knowledge, and supported by Miriam Webster and Company, the Arbiters of All Things Defined as Words, "Salad Days" are defined as "a youthful time, a period of carefree innocence, idealism and pleasure associated with youth, a heyday, a period when somebody was at the peak of their abilities, not necessarily in their youth."  Such as my life, mid-twenties: pre-AIDS, mid-cocaine, playing music in bars where the women were usually drunk, and if lucky, possessing a  questionable moral compass. Also known as "The Good Old Days".

But why "salad", you may ask. We can thank Bill Shakespeare for the "salad days" turn of phrase, he having apparently grabbed it out of thin air to back the quote in Antony and Cleopatra, where Cleo laments her youthful dalliances with Julius Caesar at the end of Act I "...My salad days, / When I was green in judgment, cold in blood/To say as I said then!  Get it? Green, cold - salad? Leave it to WS, who came up with other phrases we still use to this day, such as "mum's the word", "too much of a good thing" and "dead as a doornail".

One phrase not attributed to Shakespeare: "Good day, sir."