I will, if you’ll stop telling the truth about me.

Samantha wore a generic princess outfit, one that I didn’t think would serve her well in today’s cutthroat begging environment. To give her a competitive edge, I taped a dozen orange road flares to her arms and torso. The emergency flares were supposed to look like dynamite, even though they didn’t. Since they were reddish and cylindrical, they were adequate for our purpose. I also taped an old, broken walkie-talkie to her chest then gave her the script for the evening.

We decided to practice on her mother, which turned out to be a big mistake.

“That mean man’s gonna blow me up if you don’t give me all your candy right now,” she told Beverly.

I smiled, and pointed to the other broken walkie-talkie in my hands.

Beverly gave me a nasty look, and confiscated Samantha’s flares and walkie-talkie.

“C’mon, princess,” I told Samantha, “not much we can do if your mother doesn’t want us to try something different.”

“Goodbye, Sam, have a great time,” Beverly said. “Your mommy loves you. And as for you, David, I’ll deal with you later.”

I was afraid of that.

It turns out that Samantha ended up with tons of candy anyway, after she learned to say, “Please, may I have some more for the sick children at my orphanage?”

Beverly reports that the best excuse she ever got from a charlatan was, “I’m short for my heighth.”

When she came to yesterday’s entry, I told her that I always got confused between the words “height” and “heighth.” She told me that the rule is to always use “height” and never use “heighth.” I asked her why, and she gave me a simple explanation.

“Heighth isn’t a word,” she declared. “Never has been and never will be.”

“Ah,” I replied, “that would explain why I couldn't find it in the dictionary.”

After Anika left, I decided to get a second opinion. The Internet found over eighty thousand references to heighth. For example, Dickens used it in Great Expectations: “Pip, I wish you ever well and ever prospering to a greater and a greater heighth.” My favorite citation, though, was from an academic who declared, “... heighth was common until the nineteenth century when educated usage began to favor height.”

If educated users prefer “height,” I suppose that dictates that I use the archaic alternative.

The pizza wasn’t particularly tasty; the cheese and crust shared the same rubbery texture. The lack of quality, however, was more than offset by the gluttonous quality. In combination with a few cans of marginal beer, the pizza provided a cheap, piggy feast.

I’m glad Ono offered a public correction. McCartney’s work is mediocre, insipid, vapid, hackneyed, and tedious, but, unless he gets much better, his songs certainly haven’t achieved triteness.