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.
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?
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.
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”.