I wish that 'gay' and 'queer' still meant 'happy' and 'strange'

That's because we are using a book called "Voyages in English", a reprint of a very, very old text book, when a 'gay umbrella' was just a pretty one, and a 'gay party' was just a happy one.

My 5th and 3rd graders are very innocent, thank God, so I can read the text as written without getting any sniggering from them about the many repetitions of 'gay' as an adjective. But I'll bet this text could never be used in a typical classroom today, and that's a shame.