Our then-five-year-old daughter Kendall, frustrated by yet another perceived parental slight, crossed her arms over her permanently ketchup-stained pink princess dress, shook her wildly untamed hair and shouted, “Now I never!”
My then-wife Patricia and I, busily preparing dinner, burst out laughing.
“Quick, go write that one down in the book.” Kendall had done it again – created yet another unique malapropism that we tracked in an always-at-hand spiral notebook labeled “Kendallisms.” Some of them are still, embarrassingly, in family use today.
By me, mostly.
Being born first, our son Patrick got the ball rolling. A large wicker basket piled high with Hot Wheels cars that served as a reward mechanism for good behavior was labeled “Basset o’dars.” Sweets were “nonnies.” Car hubcaps were “cadilapps,” big thunder was “bee unna,” and the swimming pool was the “women poo.”
At bedtime, we’d say our prayers and in the “Hail Mary,” “fruit of thy womb” became “throot of my room.” Instead of explaining the theological implications, it was a lot easier to just roll with it.
Later, at around six years of age, he'd toot, then gleefully note that “God forgot to put an exhaust pipe on me.” A couple years later, after YMCA camp, he came home “drunk of soda.”
But Patrick’s phrasing was nothing compared to that of his younger sister Kendall.
At about four years old, she’d emerge from the pool, sit down, then get up again and point to her “sitting wetness.”
She called my dad, whose name was Jim, “Poppa Dim.”
She’d call sloppy stuff “swobby,” because whatever it was, it was filled with “goobies and globbies,” whatever those were.
A blanket on the couch: “snuggable.”
A cat sleeping on the couch blanket: “comatized.”
When it rained, it was “pouring cats and dollars.”
Hail: “frost pebbles.”
Headaches: “head-eggs.”
Bird poop on the windshield: “bird squid.”
A bee’s stinger: “spineler.”
Cough drops: “suckables.”
When she played outside, she was afraid she might scrape her "angles.”
Presaging our current president’s “hamberders,” she called boogers “berders.” So he either talks like a four-year-old or she’s presidential material. Or both.
When she was a bit older, she’d play beautician while I pretended to nap on the couch and she’d roll my hair in “curlies” (curlers), then tell my wife, “If he moves, earwax him.”
Still don’t know what that means but it sounds wonderfully dreadful.
On a ride at Disney World, a safety recording urged passengers to hold onto personal belongings. She asked why we needed to hang onto our personal baloney.
At Christmas time, she’d sing along to Nat King Cole’s “O Tannenbaum” but the verse turned into “Oh Timey Bomb.” Patrick would join in on “Jingle Bells” with “a one-forsh hope and sway.”
Likewise, “What is that?” became “What it be?” Which is what I still sing every time “Let It Be” comes on the radio, which, after 50 years, still happens a lot (yaay Beatles!).
Her career in the food-service industry was perhaps preordained. As a toddler, she liked baked squash at Highland Park Cafeteria (who didn’t?) and called it “dee-yums” (the yums). At “crunch” (brunch), she wondered if we’d have “fertilizers” (appetizers).
She’d play waitress at “Macalonia’s," her imaginary restaurant. "We have salad magnolia with nuts made of candy, tea and milkshakes. See this dead chicken? Yucky, huh? Well, I cooked it and here it is. Cheesecake and strawberry dip – you want that, misters?”
When asked about gratefulness in an interview for the school newsletter, Patrick was grateful for his parents. Kendall was grateful for chicken.
Patricia was slicing old cheese for the dogs and Kendall asked, “Can you cut me some human cheese?”
We had her hearing tested several times with negative results. She heard fine, she just processed differently.
After all, English is a hard language to learn.
“Read” can be pronounced “reed” or “red,” and “foot” and “book” are spelled just like “boot” and “hoot” but pronounced differently. Don’t even get me started on “rain,” "rein” and “reign.”
And honestly, a lot of her malapropisms made more linguistic sense than what we’re taught.
For example, in our world, there’s “I am” and “I am not.” In her world, the opposite of “I am” is “I amen’t.”
If you’re having an argument, you’re “arguming.” Using the same logic, “bester” works bester than “better.”
In a related vein, if the day before today was “yesterday,” then the night before would be “yesternight.”
Animals have fur and people have hair, so when taken together, we all have “fair.”
She’d also pose deeply philosophical questions that would stun a Buddhist monk. She once asked me, “Why do fishes don’t?” I assume she meant “breathe,” but before I could attempt an answer, she skipped off to find more human cheese and yucky chicken.
Then there was, “Are either of those both of them?” That’s pretty deep for a little kid.
The trend continued in their pre-teen years, when Patrick stepped up with a family classic.
He and Kendall were watching the movie “Jaws” in the TV room as I eavesdropped on a serious discussion about “chum.” With great gravitas, Patrick patiently explained that chum was “old meat and guts,” ground up to attract sharks.
Then he proclaimed that chum came “from a place where they take the cows, you know, a chop-em-uppery.”
I dashed into the bathroom to laugh hysterically.
My ten-year-old grandson Hudson (Patrick’s son) hasn’t been afflicted by the manglish gene. Even as a little kid, his mispronunciations were few and nothing like auntie Kendall.
My favorite is “eee-chudder” for “each other.” And his reference to an Earth globe became an instant classic: “Urf ball,” because, well, that’s what it is.
He measured time by “sleeps.” “How many sleeps until we go to PawPaw’s house?”
Works for me.
When he was about seven, he was reading street signs out loud to me and called out Everglade as “ever-glad.” I didn’t correct him because I thought it reflected his sweet nature.
The porcelain devices in the men’s room are “wall potties,” which is a pretty succinct description. And when you first wake up and experience morning grogginess, you’re “waking-uppish.”
We were talking about the country of Holland and he offered up the (presumably rodent-wracked) city of “Hamsterdam.”
Most recently, just after Thanksgiving, he struggled to name the delicious yeasty rolls he gobbled up one after another. He settled on “biscuit bread.” Rolls right off the tongue.
And so dinner rolls shall be known forevermore.
But really, his use of English is more deliberate and, in my entirely unbiased opinion, startlingly clever. Just recently, he was asked by his fourth-grade teacher for the elements of an atom.
Fully knowing the correct answer, he instead piped up cheerfully, “Protons, electrons and Megatrons.” (Megatron, you see, is one of the bad-guy Decepticons from the “Transformers” movie franchise, which he adores.)
His classmates shrieked with delight. His teacher handed him a demerit.
Later that day, Patrick picked him up from school, signed the demerit with a not-so-muffled chuckle and said they both laughed all the way home. As well they should.
It’s fitting that I close with another Kendallism because at 36, she’s still at it.
We were driving to dinner in Austin recently and a Doors song, “Riders on the Storm,” came on the radio. Singing along with gusto, she belted out – in all seriousness – “captor a la mode,” cheerfully unaware that the lyric is “actor out on loan.”
Yep, she’s still got it.
I can't wait to hear what Giuliana, the latest addition to the family (pictured with mom Livia) comes up with. Given that she hears both English and Italian around the house, it's bound to be spettacolare (spectacular).
English – it’s really just child’s play.