Margaret (left) knows what 'gakky' means.
LIFE’S BIG REALIZATIONS happen in life’s small moments. I’ve said it before, I’m saying it again, in all, I say it a lot. Here’s the proof:
My daughter has a low-grade cold. We’re just done buying cough drops. This is not the huge moment, and neither is the next one, which is that as the traffic light changes from red to green, and she shows me the cough drops she has purchased, I state that at least they are not the “gakky” kind.
And it happens. The big one.
“Is that a real word?”
Uh-oh. This has never come up. Thirteen good years of parenting are flashing before my eyes.
“Why do you ask?” Bad ploy. Bad, bad ploy. Any parent knows better, and yet every parent pedals and backpedals, and right at this moment my emotional tricycle is spinning out of control.
“Is it a real word?” She is pressing on, regardless.
“It’s not.”
She sniffs. But do not mistake this as sniffing from the cold she has. This is the other kind of sniffing, the bad kind, the kind that detectives, criminal defense attorneys and British solicitors get to employ, that sniffing reserved for people who already know the answer to the question they just asked.
“What about ‘jats?’ Is ‘jats’—as in ‘jammy-jats’—is that a real word?”
“Well, I mean, my sister and I, oh, huh, and your uncle Gary—and Daddy use it.”
Nothing.
“Harry used it,” I say, trying.
“Harry was a cat.” I can’t help notice that the words have now taken on a vaguely projectile quality.
“Yes, well, absolutely everyone else I mentioned was a person.” What I think is charming is how if you look closely, you’ll see that I’m actually still expecting this to go my way.
“…and I used it in front of my friends the other night at the sleepover,” she said.
She’s 13. And this is not the first warning I’ve gotten. There have been others, all ignored, that she has expressed in her great wish that just sometimes I’d walk a more linear path with the real and what is.
Maybe she’s right. Maybe she deserves better. After all, Margaret has complained about my imagination for years (though please note above that she, too, calls pajamas “jammy jats.” Uh huh). And, as I admitted in a recent post, Margaret’s childhood Eeyore to my childhood Tigger grew up only to be her adulthood Kanga to my adulthood Tigger, meaning that only one of us has changed all that much. Hmmmmm. Maybe I should button up and straighten up and fly right. Maybe, just maybe I should.
Nah.
No related posts.
First time here? Here's the idea: 
{ 22 comments… read them below or add one }
Woodgy. It means fabric that’s not very firm. My sister/cousin passed this year, but that was our shared word.
Oh, Annie, that’s marvelous. Woodgy. I love that and will use it. Such a gift.
Have you seen this, our post and comments on losing a sister? I hope so. http://thesisterproject.com/roach/the-list-that-helps-with-loss/ And I hope it helps.
You helped all of us with woodgy, my favorite new word.
Come back soon, sister.
My kids used the exclamation “blarg” to excess for many years, and it occasionally pops out even as they settle into teen years. It’s a catch-all expletive.
When I say “I strugged it out,” my family knows I mean that I got the job done even though I was suffering. I decided when Kerri Strug nailed her vault on a bum foot at the Olympics that I would keep her name alive by turning it into an expression.
My wife and I recognize that ooshnu means “to towel off.” It was the punchline of a conversation in the sit-com Family Ties many years ago. Somehow it stuck with us.
Of course, there are more… but I can’t dig them out. They spew forth under the right circumstances.
Hello, Daniel. And welcome back. The etymology of “it struggled out” made me smile so genuinely that you, my new friend, have been bestowed membership as an honorary Roach sister. Congratulations. And keep writing us.
When I was little, my brother convinced me that the word for water was “Auteronse” (Aw-ter-onse). And I used it for years. We still say it every once in awhile but I don’t think I’ve slipped and said it in public.
My boyfriend and I started calling something to drink “dink” which is close, but not close enough sometimes. I was going somewhere with a friend and her husband and needed to take some Advil. There was a Diet Coke up front with them and I said, “I need a dink.”
He looked at me in the rearview mirror and asked if I needed him to stop somewhere.
“No, I want the Diet Coke. Why?”
“What the h*## is a dink? I thought you needed the restroom or something.”
Sheepish grin and explanations followed.
Yes, yes, words and phrases, and some entire sentences, and more of a family affair; not just between the sisters. All humorous, so we think, and like the examples above we’ve learned to let them roll off the tongue when only family is in the room.
Welcome back, Roadchick. I love that story. It has happened to me, with our own family lexicon, any number of times, sheepish grin and explanation (as you say) always following. Please come again soon.
Hey, Winetipper. You’re right. Sometimes there are whole sentences that while foreign to others are met with knowing nods from the insiders who use them. Lovely how universal this is, isn’t it?
Gallowaiting – as in – “I know you were out gallowaiting all night.” Word invented by 4′ Checkoslovakian great-grandmother of my wife. Two generations of her decendents and their companions and children use it instead of gallivanting.
Well, yes, of course, Elissa: Gallowaiting, though I would have thought it meant milling around before being hanged. Ha! Great word. Great, great word. Long live gallowaiting; may it go on for generations to come. Thanks for sharing it. Tell your wife we love it.
Saris-works for any noun when you cant think of the word; “Pass the saris ,please…” “Should I wear my saris tucked in or out?” Geez, I am using it more and more these days as I age-I’m 55 now, honor bright!
Ooooh, nice. Thanks, Priscilla. And how are we pronouncing that? I’m working up to making a sentence out of all of our words, and I want to be able to say it, as well. And I noticed the addition of “honor bright.” Lovely. Is that from Shirley Temple?
I can’t remember any special words with my siblings — perhaps I’m blocking them out — although we did call my youngest brother Hopper-Do for years. This was started with a mangled pronuniciation of ‘Christopher’ by my then three-year old sister (‘Chrishopper’ which quickly turned into ‘Hopper.’ I think it was my father who added the final flourish to turn it into ‘Hopper-Do.’) Needless to say, calling him Hopper-Do now exposes us to the risk of great personal injury. My husband created a new word to describe the frenzied racing that our cats do in the evening sometimes — ‘fezzing.” It stands for ‘furry evening zoomer.’ We use that one all the time.
Yes, well, ahem, Sandy, children come in all ages. Fezzing is exactly what cats do in the evening. Absolutely. And just for that, I’ll tell you that the softest of places, just below a cat’s chest, in known as his pundles. Ask your cats if their don’t agree. Well, have your husband ask, since he seems to speak the lingo. Thank you. Come back soon with more, please.
muzzy, meaning not up to anything wrong, just hanging out (ha!). as in “we’re just muzzying around.”
Hey, Joanna. Welcome. Muzzy is de-lovely, with an almost cuddly quality. It’s terrific. I’m going to muzzy around as much as I can today, promise. Please come back and tell us more.
My mom always called those crunchy things in the corners of your eyes when you wake up “Kookoos”. Now I know that most people call that “sleep”. I had NO idea that others didn’t know what kookoos were until I was in junior high. Thanks mom!
Jasmine: we always called those “sleepy seeds,” not “kookoos”. But we called the blanket a “kaikai.” So, you get the kookoos under the kaikai!
Yo, Jasmine and Joanna, don’t you mean you have to stop muzzying around under the kaikai and wash out the kookoos? I’m sure you did.
Welcome, Jasmine. I just love Kookoos, the very best word for sleepy sand, right after sleepy seeds.
Thanks, Joanna for that, as well as for kaikia, the other word whose familial versions probably run the gamut from a-z.
Both of you please keep coming back and sharing your stories. We love them.
My sister and I say “hungy-mungy” for hungry, which just seems to be a variation of hungry, I guess.
Hi, Claire: Welcome. I love family variations. The comfort we have–as well as get–from these variations is a real gift in our lives. What’s funny/confusing/confounding/embarrassing is when we attempt to transport them to our “other” relationships. Hungry-mungry is swell. Please tell us more.
I love the words that my kids invent… somehow they always knew they weren’t real, but they’ve become entrenched in our family vocabulary. At 2 years old, twisted socks, instead of “ruined” became “rude-en”, at 3, seeing people kissing became “smudging” (guess that was from “smooching”). I know there must be more, but they’re so ingrained in our every-day that they don’t stand out as unusual.
Hello, Tammy.
Oh my goodness: I saw someone smudging just yesterday, right there in broad daylight! So glad to have a word for what they were doing.
That these words we tuck into our family vernacular do not stand out as unusual is the gorgeous thing, isn’t it?
Thanks so much. Please come back soon.