Boondoggles

Your mother gave you life, and you gave her … a boondoggle. Or is it a lanyard? Maybe a gimp? Grant assures a listener there are several terms for that long key fob you made at summer camp out of plastic yarn. Boondoggle seems to have originated among Boy Scouts in the Rochester, N.Y., area in the 1930s, and was later picked up by those in politics to mean “a wasteful debacle.” Grant also shares a French term for these summer-camp crafts, scoubidou, pronounced just like the cartoon dog. Nobody writes more movingly about lanyards than poet Billy Collins. This is part of a complete episode.