The Meaning of Mint

My English godson Ben the Unspeakable was in town, and we met for a drink in a venerable bar in the heart of Hollywood, where I ordered a gin and tonic, while he, being still laid low from the previous night’s clubbing, was reduced to a glass of vivid pink lemonade garnished enticingly with acid green glacé cherries.

(Photo by Eleanor Chen)

On the wall of the bar was a black and white photograph of a group of LA dignitaries and their families that had apparently been taken at some time in the 1920s. Ben surveyed it for a moment and then nodded at me.

“Which one of the group’s you, then, Old Gab?” he asked.

“I couldn’t tell you, Ben,” I said. “As you know, my memory went some years ago and I’m probably legally blind by now too. Maybe your sharp young eyes can pick me out.”

Ben scanned the shot and at last indicated a particularly repulsive old crone gnashing her gums in a bath chair.

“That’ll be you,” he said. “Back in your prime.”

“Happy times,” I averred.

Believe it or not, Ben and I are extremely fond of each other. We sat for a few moments in companionable silence over our beverages of choice.

“Soppy and Silly send their love,” he said then.

“That’s nice,” I said. I am also fond of Ben’ two sisters, a pair of fiercely intelligent young women known to the uninitiated as Poppy and Lily. “Do send mine back to them. How are they doing anyway?”

Ben paused for a moment, frowning thoughtfully over his drink. He has a generally excellent relationship with his sisters, but there are times when they clash, as siblings will.

“Well, see here, Old Gab,” he said at last. “The thing about Soppy and Silly is …”

He paused again and took a meditative bite of a cherry. Then, as he pondered, his frown turned to a thunderous scowl of disapproval.

“ … they’re mint!” he concluded in disgust.

Well, this was interesting, I thought. Back when I lived in England – which, as Ben is fond of footnoting, was probably sometime around the time of the Black Death – mint was simply a sauce that one added to one’s leather-like English Sunday roast lamb. A few years ago, I knew, the word had been co-opted into the general English slang to express something cool and new. But here it was turning up yet again just a few years later, and now with a new meaning apparently directly opposite to the previous, because the “mint” now frowningly extended to Poppy and Lily by their brother was clearly the reverse of a compliment, and I wondered which particular element of his sisters’ combined personalities had so roused Ben’s ire and how.

I also found myself intrigued as to the precise meaning of this new term. An insult was an insult, after all, but there were different shadings to different sorts of insult, and I wondered what exact manner of disparagement the new “mint” might be, and how I might most aptly appropriate it myself for my own future use.

Then I remembered my godmotherly status.

“You know, Ben,” I said, kindly. “Sometimes when we’re young, our siblings can seem to be the most irritating people in the world. But then when we get to be a little bit older, we realize they’re really very good friends to have.”

My godson was continuing to glower.

“Mint,” he repeated, firmly. And then, as if to reinforce his outrage, “Mint.”

“You might feel that way now, Ben,” I said. “But it can be a cold old world out there, and when bad things happen in it, you’re sometimes reminded just how important your family is.”

Ben ran a despairing hand through his hair.

“Mint!” he snorted, softly.

“You never know, Ben,” I said, “what the future might hold.”

My godson turned to me, his eyes blazing indignation.

“Have you ever had mint-flavored cherries, Old Gab?” he demanded.

I sat, re-arranging the conversation in my mind.

“Well, no, Ben,” I said after a moment. “I can’t say that I ever have.”

“Keep it that way,” he advised me darkly.

We sat for a few more minutes over our drinks.

“So, Ben,” I finally failed to restrain myself from pursuing. “When you said ‘They’re mint,’ just now … you were talking about the cherries, correct?”

My godson looked at me what can only be described as kinda funny.

“Well, yes,” he said. “What else would I have been talking about?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “For some reason I thought you were talking about your sisters.”

My godson now stared at me in incredulity.

“My sisters?” he echoed. “Why would I say my sisters were mint?”

“I don’t know,” I confessed. “I just for some reason thought you did.”

My godson shook his head in sorrow.

“Dear, oh dear,” he said.

He took a revivifying gulp of his Barbie-hued lemonade.

“Old Gab,” he sighed.

He shook his head again and whistled softly through his teeth.

“Dad always said you were barmy,” he reminded himself.