Missile man

Writing about my childhood fascination with Methuselah dredged up this old memory.

When I was a very young child, I labored under the misapprehension that "this old man" -- you know, the fellow who had a knick-knack paddywhack with which he played knick-knack on, among other things, my thumb -- was actually called "missile man." (British readers will have to keep in mind that Americans pronounce missile as missal, so that it very nearly rhymes with this ol'.) Now I know what you're thinking: "'Missile man came rolling home?' That doesn't even make sense!" True enough, but what can I say? I was young.

I'm not sure how old I was when I got around to looking up "Methuselah" in a Bible dictionary, which informed me that the meaning of the name was "possibly 'man of the missile.'" This confused me on several levels -- partly because names from before the Tower of Babel ought to be etymologically opaque, and partly because, as far as I knew at the time, the word missile could refer only to a warhead-bearing rocket, which seemed just a bit out of place in the Old Testament. (It would still be many years before I was inducted into the mysteries of THAC0, saving throws, and the distinction between melee and missile weapons.) Anyway, I started thinking of the "missile man" in the song as being Methuselah.

Later, of course, I found out that it had been "this old man" all along -- which, by a strange coincidence, is also a singularly appropriate title for Methuselah!