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Now I can get on with my subject.
Most of us have a private language unique to our family. If someone else heard us talking that way, they would think we were bonkers. What makes my case more strange is that for years, I didn't know what my relatives were talking about and just made up my own definitions for the terms they used.
For example, when I was a kid running around the yard, my dad would tell me, "Don't fall on your coon dog."
All through my childhood, I assumed that by "coon dog" he meant my head, and I thought it odd that he referred to my head that way. Reading Where the Red Fern Grows in fourth grade didn't dislodge that thought. I was over twenty years old when I realized he was using an old Appalachian coon-hunting term, and he was warning me not to stumble onto my imaginary, faithful hound.
I could expect that from my dad, whose own father always said "crick" for any small flowing body of water, and whose mother, after scolding someone would proclaim, "I clum his frame and shingled his roof."
My uncle on my mom's side did his part, too. Every time we played Scrabble with Grandma T, he would yell "Sizzigee! Try to spell THAT." Just this year I looked it up. It's spelled syzygy and has to do with celestial bodies in orbit.
Then there was his father, my grandpa T. If we kids complained of hunger, he would say, "Screaming Yellow Zonkers is what you need," and if we were leaving for the store with Mom or Grandma he would cry, "don't forget the Screaming Yellow Zonkers!" I couldn't decide if Screaming Yellow Zonkers were a food or a pet, like Sea Monkeys, but finally I saw a box of them in the grocery store. It looked like Cracker Jack, except yellow.
Some of my favorite strange family words are simple mispronunciations. (I had a college roommate who would murder the French language on purpose, because she didn't want to bother with the odd vowel combos, or talking off the roof of her mouth. "I see behind your fah-KADE," she would hiss, "You're just a boo-shwa-ZEE.")
This of course reminds me of my Grandma T, who in her later years suffered from memory loss. This was hard to watch, but sometimes funny because you could tell her a completely true fact and she would stare at you like she just caught you in a terrible lie. "Ba-LOG-na," she would snort.
Then there's my paternal grandmother. She likes to scramble words and then act as if everyone else is saying them wrong. I might be stepping on some toes here...but...this used to drive my mother nuts. This all came to a head one evening about twenty years ago. Grandma and Grandpa were visiting from Dixie and we were all around the table eating nachos.
"Please pass the glockamola," said Grandma.
Everyone froze. Don't say it, Mom, my sister and I silently begged.
"GLOCKAMOLA?" Said my mother.
"Yes, please," said Grandma.
To this day it's hard not to say glockamola when I'm talking about guacamole.
For my conclusion, I've saved my favorite example. This one doesn't even fit in a category, but I have to suggest that if you're a male reader, it's a delicate subject.
When I was a kid, whenever a female relative or acquaintance had to have her uterus removed, my maternal aunts and uncle would say, "Ah, the old hysterosalaphingahooferectomy."
It took me until last year, at age forty, to figure out that hysterosalaphingahooferectomy was not the term used in medical circles for that surgery.
