The Twins of the Father » Trouble with words

Slash

Mark — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 18:49:27 +0000

Wow, how time flies. The girls are now 10 but you’ll be glad to hear they’re just as much fun (and just as inept at performing basic personal hygiene routines independently) as they’ve always been.

Their latest thing is the word “slash”, used to combine multiple concepts into one exciting new hybrid. We’ve just come back from a weekend away, where at 10:30pm on Saturday the unmistakeable sounds of monkeying about were still drifting down from the girls’ bedroom. I went up to investigate.

Both girls were on the floor between their beds, along with all their bedclothes, helpless with laughter. The light was on. They both attempted that face that says, “Gosh, how did this happen? I could swear I was just asleep.” Spotting an opportunity to blame Hannah for the noise, Lauren clutched her face.

“Hannah kicked me in the gums-slash-chin-slash-cheek-slash-jaw!” she cried.

“Yeah,” muttered Hannah, “and she started moaning-slash-wailing.”

33, 34, 35, 36

Mark — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 18:05:07 +0000

Hannah to Nicola: “Mummy, do the numbers 33, 34, 35 and 36 occur to you?”

Nicola: “Occur to me? What do you mean?”

Hannah: Y’know, do they ring a bell?”

Hannah is standing half in her wardrobe. She is “getting ready for bed“.

Nicola: “No, not particularly.”

Hannah (producing theatre ticket stubs with a flourish from within the wardrobe): “High School Musical seat numbers!”

Nicola (slapping forehead): “Of course…”

When is a prawn not a prawn?

Mark — Wed, 07 May 2008 09:53:41 +0000

The girls continue to hone their joke-telling skills, using me as their unfortunate foil. This morning’s selection came once again from Lauren.

Joke 1
Q. How do you make anti-freeze?
A. Lock her in the fridge.

[Aside: One of my earliest memories is wondering why this joke got such a big laugh when I didn't even understand it. The reason, it turned out, was because I was asking "How do you make granny freeze?". I was just wondering where Lauren got such a well-polished joke from when out tumbled another one.]

Joke 2
Q. Why did the prawn go out with the fig?
A. Because he couldn’t get a date.

I loved that one, especially the nicely random prawn touch.

It was at this point that Hannah came running in, clutching the Puffin’s Brilliantly Big Bumper Joke Book, and shouted, “No, Lauren, it’s prune!”

The difference about a witch

Mark — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 11:14:00 +0000

I can’t believe it’s been so long since I last shared the girls’ jokes with you (over a year now!). Time to make amends with an absolute belter from Lauren this morning.

Lauren: Daddy, do you want to hear a really bad joke?
Me: OK.
Lauren: OK, so… what’s the difference about a witch…
Me: Between, Lauren. What’s the difference between.
Lauren: Oh yeah, OK, right… what’s the difference between a witch and…
Hannah: A biscuit!
Lauren: Hannah!
Me: Hannah, don’t interrupt, let Lauren tell her joke. Go on Lauren.
Lauren: OK, so, right, what’s the difference about a witch…
Me: Between.
Hannah: Stop interrupting Lauren, Daddy.
Me: Shush, Hannah.
Lauren: …between a witch and… erm…
Hannah: A biscuit!
Lauren/Me: HANNAH!!
Lauren: Hang on, it’s on my joke book… [fetches joke book]… Oh yeah, right: what’s the difference between a wizard and the letters K, A, S, M and E?
Me: I don’t know.
Lauren: One makes spells and the other spells MAKES!

It’s all in the timing.

“Daddy, what’s a pussy wagon?”

Mark — Sat, 07 Oct 2006 13:09:04 +0000

This is just one of the terrifying questions I’m anticipating now that the girls have discovered the institution of girlhood that is Grease. Actually, “discovered” is a coy understatement: they’ve recorded it and have taken to watching it several times a day. I’d never seen it before and I had no idea just how adult the dialogue is, not to mention the pelvic gestures.

Nicola, on the other hand, is taking it all in her stride, assuring me that she went to see it at the age of 6 with her grandmother and it all goes over your head at that age.

I suspect I’m just “being a dad” on this one. Do any readers have any Grease-related personal stories they can share which might calm my troubled mind?

Double Lick

Mark — Sun, 17 Sep 2006 17:12:41 +0000

We found ourselves at the back of a very long queue at the ice cream kiosk today, so the girls started running a relay to the front to report back on the flavours available. The full list they assembled was as follows:

Vanilla
Dutch Chocolate
Real Strawberry
Mint Choc Chip
Raspberry Ripple
Double-Lick Vanilla

This caused no small amount of excitement in our section of the queue. What scrumptious Wonka-like invention was this “double-lick vanilla”? Was double-lick technology also available on other flavours? We began to scrutinise passing ice creams for a clue as to what double-licking might entail.

Sadly, when we reached the front we realised that what was actually on offer was diabetic vanilla. After that our ice creams tasted strangely disappointing.

Another word for dimples

Mark — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 10:52:28 +0000

The other day I showed Hannah and Lauren the beautiful dimples they both have right at the bottom of their backs, one each side of the spine. They had great fun tickling each other’s dimples until, as usual, it all spiralled out of control and the police had to be called.

This morning Hannah appeared in our bed in her heatwave-friendly birthday suit and stretched out on her tummy. Her hand went wandering over her back until she found her dimples but at this point she suffered a sudden vocabulary malfunction.

“Mummy,” she said, “did Daddy tell you we’ve got bottom nostrils?”

List for the trip

Mark — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 16:01:56 +0000

Hannah and Lauren went on a school trip last week (a day out at Lyme Park). Here is the list of things to take that Hannah brought home from school. (Click it for a bigger version.)

List for the trip

Lunch
bag
thining caps (thinking caps)
listening ears
good manners
treyners (trainers)
coat (i.e. rain mac – it was baking hot)
Bottle (i.e. of water)
hat (it means sun-hat, although one of the girls tried to take a woolly bobble hat)
Biran (brain)
sunglasses
books
suncrim (sun cream)

“The best in the whole wide wierd”

Mark — Sat, 01 Apr 2006 08:40:53 +0000

“The best in the whole wide wierd” by bitrot

Hannah wrote this questionnaire this morning and got me and Nicola to write in our answers. I suspect we were biased.

The answers to the obvious questions were:

1. “Oh yeah, it’s meant to say ‘world’.”
2. (Regarding the cactus-shaped object) “Er… it’s a bogey!”

Has anyone warned Popeye??

Mark — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 13:18:07 +0000

Hannah and Lauren’s reading is really coming on these days, and they’re bringing more and more advanced reading books home from school. Yesterday Lauren was doing a lovely job of reading Sleeping Beauty. I wonder if you can spot the one word she stumbled on?

“Can I try it?” said the princess.

“Of course,” replied the old woman. The princess reached over, but the moment her finger touched the spinach she fell into a deep sleep.

Square words (part 2)

Mark — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 19:55:00 +0000

At the age of five and a half, Hannah and Lauren’s grasp of “square words” is still not quite there. A conversation from earlier today:

Hannah: “Daddy, Lauren just said ‘pupils’!”
Lauren (in protest): Hannah started it!!

Weirdo

Mark — Mon, 06 Feb 2006 05:47:31 +0000

A classic from Lauren yesterday:

“Daddy, I know what a weirdo is.”
“Oh yes? What is it?”
[Seriously] “Well, it’s a lady whose husband has died.”

Porcupines

Mark — Wed, 17 Aug 2005 17:03:00 +0000

A conversation I overheard yesterday from the next room:

Hannah: Mummy? Do you know what porcupines are?
Nicola: Yes.
Hannah: What are they then?
Nicola: Well, they’re animals with lots of spikes, a bit like hedgehogs.
[Confused pause.]
Hannah: So why do people say “Don’t tell porcu-pines”?
Nicola: No, sweetheart, that’s porky pies. It means lies: don’t tell lies.
Hannah [penny dropping]: Ohhh!

Aside: Friends and family will know that porcupines (or one porcupine in particular) will have a special significance for Hannah one day. She just doesn’t know that yet.

Hee highls

Mark — Mon, 27 Jun 2005 18:08:18 +0000

Hannah and Lauren have each got a pair of plastic high-heeled shoes for dressing up. Despite our best efforts, Hannah insists on calling them her “hee highls”, conjuring up the image of some kind of regimental Nazi footwear. The effect is particularly vivid when combined with Hannah’s unique style of staccato shouting, such as, earlier this evening: “LAUREN! DON’T! GO! UPSTAIRS! WITH! YOUR! HEE-HIGHLS! ON!”

The things that begin with C

Mark — Fri, 13 May 2005 12:34:00 +0000

Getting dressed for school this morning, Lauren suddenly piped up excitedly: “Daddy! Guess what my…” before being caught short by a sudden attack of memory loss. She turned to Nicola.

“Mummy, what are those round things called?”

“What round things?” asked Nicola, perplexed.

“You know, the ones that begin with C?” Another blank look from Nicola. I could see Lauren was beginning to get frustrated.

“Oh Mummy, you know! The things we had for breakfast!”

The penny dropped. “Oh, you mean Cheerios?”

“Yes!” Lauren spun back round with a big grin. “Daddy! Guess what my burp just tasted of? Cheerios and toothpaste!”

Boff is a square word

Mark — Mon, 11 Apr 2005 15:26:00 +0000

The girls and I were heading out to the chip shop the other day. There was some amount of hilarity going on in the back seat at the prospect of their fish and chips making them burp. (“I’m going to do a big burp!” – “I’m going to do a huge burp!” – that kind of thing.) So, understanding that the quickest way to a four-year-old’s heart is via the use of slightly rude words, I interrupted with the stern command: “Girls. You can have fish and chips as long as you promise… that you won’t burp… and won’t boff.”

There was a stony silence for a second or two, then Hannah gasped, “Ahhhh, you said a square-word!”

“Yes,” seconded Lauren, “Mummy said it’s very naughty to say square-words!”

“Like what?” I asked.

“We can’t say them!” came the reply.

“What, like boff?”

“Ahhhhhh!!”

“And burp?”

“No, burp’s not a square-word.”

“And bum?”

“Ahhhhhh!!”

This got us all the way to the chip shop: me trying out rude-ish words and seeing what reaction they got. By the time we arrived, we’d ascertained that boff, bum and winky were square-words, whilst burp, poo-poo and wee-wee were socially acceptable.

I still haven’t had the courage to ask Nicola what really prompted her to tell the girls about “square-words” – maybe because, somewhere deep down, I suspect I’m probably to blame.

Googy

Mark — Wed, 30 Mar 2005 09:19:00 +0000

I’m not a big believer in twins creating their own languages. There’s been no evidence of it in our family anyway. They do, however, make up the odd nonsense word just like any other children. Hannah and Lauren’s favourite and most hard-wearing such word is “googy”.

Googy covers a whole range of bases. It’s a nickname! It’s a substitute for any other noun! It’s a fast-acting catalyst to monkeying about! For example:

Hannah: Googy!
Lauren: Yes, Googy?
Me/Nicola (through gritted teeth): Open… wide…
Lauren: What is it, Googy?
Hannah: Er… Googy! (helpless mirth ensues)
Me/Nicola (curiously unaffected by helpless mirth): Come here NOW and BRUSH YOUR TEETH!!

Googy has become one of those mixed blessings of parenthood. On the one hand, the girls just wouldn’t be their cheeky selves without it. On the other hand, they wouldn’t be such a pain in the arse without it either. Every now and then there’s an incident that swings the pendulum very much one way or the other. One such incident happened a couple of days ago, as I was still in bed. There was a little conversation going on just outside the bedroom door which I had the good luck to overhear:

Lauren: Googy?
Hannah: Yes, Googy?
Lauren: What’s the French for Googy?
Hannah: Er, it’s… (pause to adopt correct accent)… Gaugisse.

Praise be to Googy. Where would we be without it?

Oh, before you were born

Mark — Wed, 16 Mar 2005 22:18:00 +0000

As a Man of a Certain Age, one of the most significant events for me in recent years was obviously the release of the original Star Wars trilogy on DVD. I was particularly pleased by this cinematic landmark because Hannah and Lauren had, until that point, only seen the new episodes, and I was growing increasingly anxious that they might come to accept them as The Star Wars Films, with the originals seen as some kind of quaint curiosity for old duffers. When I think back to my parents commenting that Tom Baker wasn’t the real Doctor Who, it still seems like a lot of fuss about nothing. But if I just change a few of the words – change it to me, for example, insisting to obliviously shrugging daughters that Ewan McGregor isn’t the real Obi Wan Kenobi – the situation suddenly takes on a horrible gravity, of the kind that could keep me awake at night.

So, it was clear the girls needed to be correctly indoctrinated as soon as possible. Well in advance, I alerted them to the fact that the DVDs would be released shortly, and managed to arouse some kind of passing interest, albeit in the arrival of what they called “a new R2-D2 film”. Clearly there was no time to lose.

On the day the DVDs arrived I came home as early as I could from work and the girls and I sat down, with an appropriate sense of ceremony, in front of the telly. By about half an hour later, any thought of educational progress had been abandoned and I would happily have chewed my own leg off for just a few hours on my own with my DVDs, my memories, and a kitchen foil tube for a light sabre. Here’s what happened.

Fizzy and twinkly

Mark — Sun, 27 Feb 2005 22:21:00 +0000

There are a couple of words that Hannah and Lauren use at the moment that I wanted to record somewhere before they pass out of use and we forget about them.

Fizzy is descriptive of food that is either spicy or sharp. Examples would include chicken tikka or salt and vinegar crisps. (“Ooh, Mummy,these crisps are a bit fizzy!”)

Twinkly is what happens to your hands or feet if you sit on them so long they go numb: when you get up they “go (all) twinkly”.