Nude — [adj.] naked, bare, unclothed, skyclad. Alternate spellings (used by the local high school Academic Challenge team boys) : nood, newd, knood, gnood, newed, noude, knewd, knewed, noohd, knude, gnude. The occasion was big-screen NTN trivia in a sports bar where their coaches, my friends, gathered them to compete in a weekly tournament as a fun way to practice their craft (about 25 years ago in another lifetime). Trivia players had to sign in with a “handle” of six letters or less. These were, of course, teenage boys, so the above choices afforded them a bit of extra entertainment, not to mention the opportunity to embarrass the trivia announcer, who happened to be a young woman. Her job was to announce winners (pretty much always one of the Academic Challenge kids — intelligent teenage boys, but still…teenage boys) on the microphone to all the onlookers in the restaurant. One of the young men who won A LOT began to sign in with the handle MYBALZ, for the sheer joy of attempting to embarrass the announcer. When she had to figure out how to deal with this on the microphone, my friends and I, seeing her pending distress, beckoned her over and suggested the pronunciation of “Mibbles”, rhyming with nibbles and kibbles. Hah!! Take that, MYBALZ!!
Today’s Word…bored
Bored, boar-d, boor-d. (Okay, I take liberties. It’s my fictionary.) Bored — what I am being stuck inside and no good at housework. Boar-d — boars are kind of piglike…and I’m getting there!! Boor-d — feeling boorish, too (sigh…..)
Today’s Word…sublime
Sublime — Under lime? Lime the fruit or lime the color? Hmmm….
Today’s Word…pre-empt
Pre-empt — pre (before); empt [Thelmese] empty/vacant. Today’s Word has been pre-empted because another blog post was pre-empted (an adventure story thwarted by an inadvertent touch of a key which prematurely removed the content of a saved draft). Aaaaaarrrrgggghh!!! Back to the drawing board.
Mo! Mo Mo Bo Mo, Bonana Fama Fo Mo, Fee Fy Fo Mo! Mo!
Edith! Edith Edith Bo Edith, Bonana Fama Fo Edith, Fee Fy Fo Edith! Edith!
Anyone remember the song “The Name Game”? Ahhh. the ways we entertained ourselves in the good ol’ days!
So….Mo and Edith Anne, the next leg of the Monkey Mom stories.
When Mo came to live with us, we knew he seemed a bit older. Visually we could see that he was larger than Kong had been. And the attitude! We always felt that poor Mo had been netted in the Brazilian rain forest and taken away from a wife and family. Or at least from his bio mom. He was never the cuddly, snuggly baby Kong had been.
Mo did have an astute sense of character, however. There was a neighbor boy, Dickie, who, according to my human son, had a history of trying to shoot squirrels with a slingshot. The first time Mo got within a leash length of Dickie, he made a direct leap to the boy’s stomach and chomped him. Dickie never ventured near Mo again.
Years after Mo had passed away (a stroke), we went to see the movie “Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan”. It broke my heart in many ways, especially the scenes in which monkeys were confined in labs for experimentation. Nostalgia overcame me, and I started to consider monkey parenting once again. Husband number two had not had the previous monkey parenting experience, but he was sympathetic and proceeded to set aside a chunk of the income tax return and schedule a road trip to a dealership called Monkeys Unlimited.
Entering the facility, we were greeted by the sight of an adorable baby baboon dressed in a striped shirt and bib overalls (reminiscent of Waldo) climbing up and down a floor-to-ceiling chain link cage which boasted a humungous padlock. Staff informed us that the little guy was getting close to being able to pick this lock, too, so they were trying to come up with plan B (B obviously standing for Bright Baby Baboon).
In the next room was a bank of cages on the wall into which a variety of breeds of monkeys were grouped. We were given monkey chow to feed them, and we proceeded to make friends…with all but one, Leon (more about him later).
We found that the black and white colobus monkeys were pleasant, but a bit unwieldy. The guenons were a gentle, unusually polite group. We would hold a handful of food outside their cage, and the would approach it with such manners. “Oh, you go first. Thank you. Don’t mind if I do. Oh, I’ll wait. Your turn.” Fascinating! Capuchins were another story. Hand out with food. Four monkeys, eight little fists scrabbling and grabbing. “Mine! Mine! Get outta here! Mine mine mine!!”
And then there were the squirrel monkeys. And out of a group of five, one adorable wide-eyed little girl who tentatively looked at us pleadingly. “Mom?” her eyes asked. “Mom? Will you be my mom?” And Edith Anne came home with us, my youngest child.
My Mom’s Momisms, Euphemisms, and Early Thelmisms (part 2)…
Being the protective mom that she was, my mother tried to shield me from the world’s base realities. (Often it worked; sometimes it backfired into embarrassment — mine!)
First of all, she had a penchant for euphemisms (which I would eventually figure out in some sort of “duh…” moment). For example, “witch with a capital B” and “big shot dot-the-O”. Those I figured out pretty quickly. “Adubblezee” took me a bit longer (like years; I was a pretty naive kid). Referring to one’s bottom, the word seemed to be just a synonym…until eventually the realization hit: A double Z. Hmmmm….
One that came back to haunt me when I started school was another posterior euphemism — “butty butt butt”. (Where these came from, I don’t know; one of my aunts used the same term. I just went with it.) So in school, when the teacher wanted us get in line with a “buddy”, I was really perplexed! And pretty red in the face when it was explained to me. (My mom also coined the word “doogee”, but I will not define it for you at this time.)
Today’s Word…hectic
Hectic — like “Darn! A bug!” However, given the abhorrent
nature of said bug, maybe it should be “Aaaaarghhh!!! Tick!!!” Or arctic….
Today’s Word…insane
Insane — If “sane” means of sound mind, shouldn’t “insane” mean in (as in inside of) sound mind? And then shouldn’t to be not of sound mind be “outsane”?
Today’s Word…humble
Notice how words rhyming with “umble” all seem to involve some sort of deprecation/weakness/apology/etc? Humble, fumble, bumble, crumble, jumble, grumble, stumble, mumble, rumble, (even rumble is a low key sound, as opposed to roar, a large key sound), tumble…
My Mom’s Momisms, Euphemisms, and Early Thelmisms (part 1)…
My mom was a nurse — because her stepmother believed that women should be teachers or nurses, and my aunt was already a teacher.
My mom had some stories about her experiences working in the hospital. One involved an older male patient who kept getting out of bed. Nurses, back in the day, were taught to give directives with a gentle “we”, rather than an accusatory “you”. When she took the gentleman’s arm and said, “Let’s get back in bed,” the man snapped, “I did not come here to be insulted by you or anybody else!”
Another favorite from the nursing realm involved a story from her nurses’ training. The nursing students were preparing to go to a formal dance. One of mom’s friends, who was rather sparsely endowed, was wearing a strapless formal that had a newfangled contraption inside the bra section of the dress that inflated with a little air valve to, say, give the girl’s figure a more enhanced appearance. When her date arrived and attempted to pin her corsage to her dress — boom!! Humor for some, humiliation for someone else.