In recent days, I've heard a lot of talk about a Swiss ban on Minarets.  My initial reaction was that any ban undertaken by the Swiss must be warranted.  After all if those highly neutral Swiss have taken to prohibiting something it must really be bad for you.  

I don't mean to sound at all ignorant, but the fact of the matter is, I can't know the meaning to every word there is.  Believe it or not, in my 31 years on this earth I've never shyed away from usage of a dictionary for the sole reason that my knowledge of the English language is neither encyclopedic or dictionarial (probably not even a real world but I'll have to look that up).  Needless to say, a few words have certainly slipped through the cracks, "Minarets" being one of them.

When I hear"Minarets" I think "Velamints," those paper-wrapped glistening guarantees of fresh breath my best friend's dad used to offer on each occasion he drove us to Hebrew school twice a week until 7th grade.  I wasn't aware they still made "Minarets"but if the Swiss were banning them, perhaps they had some cancer causing agent.  Maybe I should go to my doctor to check for the warning signs of mouth cancer.

 Then it occurred to me, maybe Minarets were something else.  I remember learning in grade school that a Minuet was a "slow, stately dance." Maybe a "Minaret" was a variation of that deliberately-paced promenade...a saucier version, like the Lambada of stately dances,that in addition to being too hot for ballroom competitions was made all the more forbidden by it's incorporation of lit cigarettes; hence the addendum of the  "ret" suffix. But that didn't seem right given the penchant for European societies to be a good deal more freewheelin' than our American one.  I couldn't see them getting into a tizzy about a sexy, slow cigarette dance.

Finally, having blown through this thought process in a brief spell of thirty seconds or so, I decided to actually read an article on the issue, discovering that minarets were not bygone breath fresheners nor a taboo form of boogie, but merely a tower attached to a Mosque.  That doesn't sound like such a bad thing. 

Maybe I was wrong about another thing...maybe that Swiss model of neutrality and open-mindedness isn't such a shining beacon after all;  especially when that tolerance  fails to trump  fear and bigotry.  Either way, I hear Velamints are returning in 2010 and I hope by the time I put one in my mouth, I don't have to hear anything else about banned Minarets as a minty fresh taste sends my taste buds towering towards bliss.