18 November, 2011

Ice Cream A La Mode

Family on Friday!!!

Don't underestimate the value of your personal family dictionary.  It may even be a good idea to write those words and phrases that separate your family from the rest of the world.

The words often start out as misheard or misused innocently enough, but somehow (within the family unit) they catch on.  The more embarrassing or confusing they would be out of the home, the more you know what I'm talking about.

A simple example for us is "frozen goodness."  Other people call it "ice cream."  Grandma calls it "evening freshness."  Our bearded dragon eats a mixture of "cubies, nummies, and green leafies" that sound much cuter than the reality.  The word "then" is often used as a form of punctuation.  "Motherboard" stands in as an all-purpose perfunctory way of communicating that I've lost my audience and have a choice of switching topics or shutting up completely.

Every family has their own long list of such examples.  You know when you're really getting to know someone when you get definitions and explanations of their family dictionary.  Even more so when you find yourself using them.

What these words do (other than amuse) is act like a sort of cement in the family identity.  When we hear and use them, we are reminded of how close we are and how much time we have spent together.

Being in love means never having to complete a sentence.

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