Let's Be Creative!

As many of you may know, or have gleaned from what you’ve read here, I’m not much for foul language. Unless the word that starts with  F is “free” or “fantastic” I don’t want to hear it. And as for the C word – well – you better be talking about cheese and chocolate or I’ll scowl you into next Christmas.

On the other hand . . . I do love creative  language. For instance, the other day when the humidity crept through the back door and leaped onto my left shoulder, I knew within the next  ten minutes my hair would begin to “spoodge”. That’s a word I’ve created to describe the fuzz that overtakes my carefully coiffed locks when the air changes from the cool and dry of fall and winter to the ICK of summer.

Our mother, when confronted with a whiny child who wanted to stay home from school, dreamed up an illness for the teacher’s note she’d have to write the following day. Whichever kid it was was probably faking. Mom knew it. “I guess I’ll just say you had the thru-puppa-gudgeon.” Yup, that’s the word she used. It's a really cool all purpose disease. And I’ve probably spelled it wrong but I stretched it out like that so your own tongue could wrap around it for the silly thrill of saying it. Go ahead and repeat it a couple of times – I’ll wait. 

My mother-in-law was not one to use bad language, either. Thought it was low class. “There are millions of words in the English language,” she’d say shaking her finger in the offenders face. “You don’t have to use those!”  But this left her with having to be creative, too. And she was. My favorite was dopey dilldock. These words were most frequently used to describe my father-in-law who frequently transgressed and was the object of her ire. Frequently.

All through my life I’ve know people who are language wizards. Probably the one closest to me now is my friend, Marie. Hoooo boy. She has some doozies. On a few occasions we’ve attended ecumenical services together at the local Catholic church where the faithful “benuflect” before entering the pew. Once, at the butchers counter, she ordered “100 proof ” beef and failed to understand the laughter from the meat counter guy. Her husband could barely contain himself the time she looked at a restaurant menu and ordered, with complete sincerity, “chicken condom blue”. But her favorite term of utter disgust comes in the form of this plum, “dirty ratherford”. We know not from whence it sprang but she uses the phrase with vehemence when someone (aka her husband) trumps her ace as we’re playing pinochle. You don’t even want to be there.

Lastly, we have my new favorite You Tube stars, Diamond and Silk. Get these two blathering about politics and they’re going to expose a lot of S.ugar, H.oney, I.ced, T.ea that’s going on in the political realm. I just love ‘em. (Pssst – this was Mom’s favorite – ahem – expression of disdain but you didn’t hear that from me!)

So, that’s it from my side this morning. Have some creativity you’d like to share?  I’ll come back and read them later. I’ve gotta get moving on with my day. Gonna be hot and a bit muggy. Hello spoodgy hair.

Image: Free Digital Photos