While language experts curl their lower lips and bemoan our ebbing word supply, my four year-old insists on wearing his pajamas tops backwards. That's because it give him a free hand with which to eee-eee while his other eee-eees his bockie.
This goes to show that while grown-up English words are evaporating from dusty disuse, our children are still getting a decent night's sleep and sometimes infusing new words to boot. So I'm not too awfully worried.
Trouble is, of course, the words our children introduce rarely make it. These silly words are newly-hatched sea turtles, scampering for the ebbing tides, and more often than not, are plucked from the beach by marauding scavangers. Poor baby turtles -- poor baby words.
But my four year-old Brendan has no intention of relinquishing certain words he has brought with him from, well, a soft-shelled egg under a pile of sand. In fact, two words survive to this day, and never is their use more vital than at bedtime.
The other night Brendan emerged from his bedroom in his pajamas, and I noticed that his collar was choked over has Adam's apple with the store tag hanging out like a necktie. This came as a surpirse because the kid has taken himself in and out of pajamas for a couple of years now with an excellent inside-in and rightside-front ratio.
"Uh, Brendan," I said. "I think you've got your pajama top on backwards."
"No, he doesn't," my wife corrected. "He likes to eee-eee the tag during stories and in bed."
Which made perfect sense to me.
So while my wife was reading him a tale of Pooh, there sat my enchanted son, the silken tag of his pajamas top held gently and perfectly between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. And as each page of Pooh was turned, he'd give the tag a rub, and you could hear the faintest sigh of "eeeeeeee."
As is his custom, his left arm cradled a pale yellow blanket and small red Teddy bear. The blanket he's dubbed his "bockie." It has a silky border which has been eee'd nearly since egg-hatching day.
And long ago, Brendan chose "Red Bear" as his loved one from his full fleet of stuffed animals. It was chosen for the preferred silkiness of its rectangular tag -- the lettering, "Made in Korea -- All New Material Consisiting of Polyester Fiber," has been eee'd out since his third birthday.
Sitting there, watching him eee-eee his pajamas top tag with his right hand, and eee-eee his red bear tag with his left hand, I dreamed back to my own days of eee, back when a particular word in my version of the English language had a wonderful power to comfort. The word was "munga."
That's me sitting there, Linus-like, my mouth yanking on my thumb, my munga hoisted over my shoulder. Neither Snoopy nor bogeyman nor dread of night could ever pry from me my silk-on-the-cheek munga security. Nor smoldering fireplace.
I must have eee-eee'd the bejesus out of munga, because when my parents took me to a babysitter one dark and stormy night, my ample blanket apparently had taken on a most odious countenance. The rag had been eee'd and dragged through the dirt so much, my mother's attempts at keeping it clean must have been abandoned long before.
The babysitter was so mortified by the sight and smell of this frazzled fabric that she immediately threw it in her fireplace where it sort of fried and smoldered. I was four years-old and not amused. Munga had been armor against a babysitter I feared.
Nothing but nothing could soothe hysteria upon a coughing tantrum but to fish from the smoke my prized and sizzling munga. But by this time, the only salvageable section free from blackness and crispness was sooty square of threads about the size of a sheet of toilet paper.
But this mattered not. After scissors cut it free, I just eee'd it and eee-eee'd it and coaxed from it every delicious drop of comfort I could coax until my parents might take me home again. And I am told my beleagured patch of munga was never out of eee-eee's reach for a long, long time to come.
You won't fund "munga" in the dictionary, just as Brendan's "bockie" will one day go by the wayside once he's eee'd his last eee-eee from it. They're just like my nephew's "diti" and my niece's "pasha" and probably a million other ill-fated words born in the Land of Eee.
No, these words run their brief course for as long as their silky borders lend comfort to a child's cheek or a child's finger and thumb. For surely, the business of growing up has a lot to do with forsaking emotional crutches at different stages along the way.
So when I learned the English language is losing thousands if words, especially describing words, I wondered whether Brendan's words might have a chance at replenishing the supply, of scampering into the sea of language like heroic baby sea turtles.
"Bockie" will have a long life in the hearts and minds of Brendan's family. But we all know Father Time, that marauding scavenger, will someday sentence the word to ashes and dust, just like my frittered and forsaken munga.
But something tells me "eee" has a real shot at survival. Picture this: A lonely and desperate man takes a stool at a bar and directs the bartender, "You there, right now, give me a double martineee-eee."
Or this: While a man is walking down a dark city street, a strange woman approaches and say, "Hey, baby, how about a little eee-eee?"
It could happen. We may be running out of describers. But we'll never run out of our need to describe our craving for comfort.
-- from the Traverse City Record-Eagle Summer Magazine, June 26, 1997.
Comments are welcome at tombohn2@yahoo.com
This goes to show that while grown-up English words are evaporating from dusty disuse, our children are still getting a decent night's sleep and sometimes infusing new words to boot. So I'm not too awfully worried.
Trouble is, of course, the words our children introduce rarely make it. These silly words are newly-hatched sea turtles, scampering for the ebbing tides, and more often than not, are plucked from the beach by marauding scavangers. Poor baby turtles -- poor baby words.
But my four year-old Brendan has no intention of relinquishing certain words he has brought with him from, well, a soft-shelled egg under a pile of sand. In fact, two words survive to this day, and never is their use more vital than at bedtime.
The other night Brendan emerged from his bedroom in his pajamas, and I noticed that his collar was choked over has Adam's apple with the store tag hanging out like a necktie. This came as a surpirse because the kid has taken himself in and out of pajamas for a couple of years now with an excellent inside-in and rightside-front ratio.
"Uh, Brendan," I said. "I think you've got your pajama top on backwards."
"No, he doesn't," my wife corrected. "He likes to eee-eee the tag during stories and in bed."
Which made perfect sense to me.
So while my wife was reading him a tale of Pooh, there sat my enchanted son, the silken tag of his pajamas top held gently and perfectly between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. And as each page of Pooh was turned, he'd give the tag a rub, and you could hear the faintest sigh of "eeeeeeee."
As is his custom, his left arm cradled a pale yellow blanket and small red Teddy bear. The blanket he's dubbed his "bockie." It has a silky border which has been eee'd nearly since egg-hatching day.
And long ago, Brendan chose "Red Bear" as his loved one from his full fleet of stuffed animals. It was chosen for the preferred silkiness of its rectangular tag -- the lettering, "Made in Korea -- All New Material Consisiting of Polyester Fiber," has been eee'd out since his third birthday.
Sitting there, watching him eee-eee his pajamas top tag with his right hand, and eee-eee his red bear tag with his left hand, I dreamed back to my own days of eee, back when a particular word in my version of the English language had a wonderful power to comfort. The word was "munga."
That's me sitting there, Linus-like, my mouth yanking on my thumb, my munga hoisted over my shoulder. Neither Snoopy nor bogeyman nor dread of night could ever pry from me my silk-on-the-cheek munga security. Nor smoldering fireplace.
I must have eee-eee'd the bejesus out of munga, because when my parents took me to a babysitter one dark and stormy night, my ample blanket apparently had taken on a most odious countenance. The rag had been eee'd and dragged through the dirt so much, my mother's attempts at keeping it clean must have been abandoned long before.
The babysitter was so mortified by the sight and smell of this frazzled fabric that she immediately threw it in her fireplace where it sort of fried and smoldered. I was four years-old and not amused. Munga had been armor against a babysitter I feared.
Nothing but nothing could soothe hysteria upon a coughing tantrum but to fish from the smoke my prized and sizzling munga. But by this time, the only salvageable section free from blackness and crispness was sooty square of threads about the size of a sheet of toilet paper.
But this mattered not. After scissors cut it free, I just eee'd it and eee-eee'd it and coaxed from it every delicious drop of comfort I could coax until my parents might take me home again. And I am told my beleagured patch of munga was never out of eee-eee's reach for a long, long time to come.
You won't fund "munga" in the dictionary, just as Brendan's "bockie" will one day go by the wayside once he's eee'd his last eee-eee from it. They're just like my nephew's "diti" and my niece's "pasha" and probably a million other ill-fated words born in the Land of Eee.
No, these words run their brief course for as long as their silky borders lend comfort to a child's cheek or a child's finger and thumb. For surely, the business of growing up has a lot to do with forsaking emotional crutches at different stages along the way.
So when I learned the English language is losing thousands if words, especially describing words, I wondered whether Brendan's words might have a chance at replenishing the supply, of scampering into the sea of language like heroic baby sea turtles.
"Bockie" will have a long life in the hearts and minds of Brendan's family. But we all know Father Time, that marauding scavenger, will someday sentence the word to ashes and dust, just like my frittered and forsaken munga.
But something tells me "eee" has a real shot at survival. Picture this: A lonely and desperate man takes a stool at a bar and directs the bartender, "You there, right now, give me a double martineee-eee."
Or this: While a man is walking down a dark city street, a strange woman approaches and say, "Hey, baby, how about a little eee-eee?"
It could happen. We may be running out of describers. But we'll never run out of our need to describe our craving for comfort.
-- from the Traverse City Record-Eagle Summer Magazine, June 26, 1997.
Comments are welcome at tombohn2@yahoo.com
