The American Spectator

p>Apparently I was somewhat nonverbal way past what was a typical age to start talking. My parents had me tested for deafness. When I did start talking, my speech was unintelligible to adults, but my contemporaries could translate for their parents just fine. In 18 days, I will turn 51. While my parents are still alive, I will continue to be reminded of my childish mispronunciations of “hortie” for “horsie,” “goggie” for “doggie,” and “pewfume” for “perfume.” Other more arcane ones include “erphernt” for “elephant” and “ishnishner” for “air conditioner.” These remain in my family’s lexicon, for better or worse. br> — Evelyn Leinbach br> Colorado /p>

Boy are you going to be flooded with letters on this topic!

The “sing song kitty” refrain was instantly familiar to me, and comes from an old Children’s song called “Froggie Would A Wooing Go” (or Froggie Went A’Courting and He Did Ride). I remember singing it, and it is mentioned in a book called Roller Skates written by Ruth Sawyer about her childhood growing up as a society child in turn of the 20th century New York City.

As for our family words — two of my sisters and I got together a couple of years ago in an airport lounge as one sister was leaving and I was coming in to keep watch as Daddy received his fifth pacemaker in a very iffy operation. It took no time at all for us to start bringing up the Family Wit and start singing songs that probably nobody else remembers, much to the amusement of the onlookers. For example, an old Pat Paulson ditty that goes (in its entirety) “I was standing in the road/when a big ugly man/came up and tied his horse to me.” A song made popular by Soupy Sales, “Bachalafika” which is a word apparently “whispered all over Turkey” is another one nobody else seems to know. And then there’s the immortal “Your red scarf matches your eyes/you closed your cover before striking; Your father’s got the shipfitters blues/loving you has made me bananas!” (That is the whole song.) Finally, we have the family Christmas Carol, which a late brother in law used phone Mama every Christmas morning and the two would sing together: “The Hat I Got For Christmas Is Too Big.” This song is sung by Speedy Gonzales, is Politically Incorrect, and can be found on the Internet; we now have it on a CD courtesy of an inquisitive sister.

As for words, Daddy was a notable raconteur, and in the days when cars did not have DVD players and kids did not have iPods or cell phones, Daddy would amuse us on the journey by telling us about the kingdom of Nosmo King (No Smoking) where everything was forbidden, or Chief Falling Rocks whose wife wandered the Virginia mountains in search of him — hence the prevalence of signs urging you to “Watch for Falling Rocks”; or the mysterious Apache Fog (otherwise known as a patchy fog) that descended on locations frequented by Indians. And we all still greet a sign that says “Stop Ahead” with a shout of “Stop! A Head! Oh my god, they told me if my head wasn’t screwed on I’d lose it and somebody did!” We are all over fifty now and it is still just as funny today as it ever was.

p>With the increasing lack of family togetherness and the growing number of electronic binkies that separate us one from another, this may be a dying tradition. But as long as we girls are alive, it will continue to tie us together. br> — Kate Shaw br> Toronto /p> p> What we in the Marine Corps called the drizzling shits, my three-year-old daughter described once, referring to a case her mother had, as suffering from the “dire rear.” This was even funnier because that was exactly the way she pronounced the condition and I am certain she had no appreciation at that age for the meaning of the word “dire”. No matter, that’s what she said and it has remained with me to this day…and I’m 73 now.