Just within the past week I’ve run across the following:

A car mechanic on a commercial referring to himself as a “technician.” What’s up with this business of people trying to spin their jobs in such a way that it makes them sound more important or highfalutin? You stick needles in people. Don’t call yourself an acupuncturist. You’re an “acupuncture technician.” You’re not a janitor. You’re a “maintenance technician.” Why say you work in a drug store when you can say you’re a “pharmacy technician”?

The medical profession is the world’s worst for trying to make everybody sound important. You may be on bedpan duty but you’re actually a “patient care technician.” What’s the difference between a “cardiac life support technician” and a “cardiac technician”? Do I get to walk around in public with hospital scrubs on, giving everybody the impression that I recently held somebody’s beating heart or throbbing brain in my hands, if I’m a “health information technician,” “allergy technician,” “blood bank technician,” CAT scan technician,” or “certified phlebotomy technician”?

Me, I write this column, so please refer to me from this point on as a “certified paragraphist and technician of the fourth estate.”

In the produce section of the grocery store the other day I saw these orbed green things about the size of a cannonball and they were labeled “Personal Watermelons.” Hey, I’m from the country and trust me a “personal watermelon” can weigh 30 pounds or more.

You see a watermelon in somebody’s field or garden, you sneak in and take it and no matter the size, that’s your personal watermelon. (Word of warning: Beware of “gun technicians” who might frown on you taking a personal watermelon out of their personal garden on their private property.)

I read where a couple of Alabama fishermen have been banned for life from Lake Guntersville after they were arrested and charged in connection with the crime of tampering with a sport contest.

Seems the two guys, one from Albertville, the other from Boaz, kept already caught bass in a pen and used the fish to take advantage of competitors during fishing contests on the lake.

Seriously, isn’t fishing one of the pursuits renown for, well, liars? Fudging is something inherent in the fishing process.

I’ve fished my whole life and thus I’ve caught any number of bass weighing “about” seven pounds even though I don’t recall ever weighing a single one of them. Some of those that got away were even bigger. Exaggerating size and number as in, “We caught about 30 bluegill that musta weighed a pound apiece,” is part of the fabric of the fishing experience.

Fishing is about keeping secrets (never tell anyone where that honey hole full of lunkers is located or what lure or bait you used) and being believable but just barely.

All I’m saying is as long as people believe Jonah got “et” by a whale, that a couple of guys from Albertville and Boaz had themselves a honey hole (a holding pen by the dock) and a special bait (a dip net) almost makes them bassmasters if you look at it in a certain way.

National Signing Day was last week and watching the lengths to which a bunch of 18-year-olds will go to reveal where they are going to play college football reminded me of something Logan Pearsall Smith, the essayist, said: “The denunciation of the young is a necessary part of the hygiene of older people, and greatly assists the circulation of the blood.”

Bob Morgan is a retired, award-winning journalist and author.