Field Mouse: Swear Box now in operation on this forum...

Cad was mixing a Jack and a Caesar (Romero, the Joker on the old Batman TV series). Vale, what did you mean about mixing two Jacks to get a Walter?

My grandmother used to threaten to give my brother and me a "lickin'" if we didn't behave, by which she meant a spanking. We knew she was not strong enough to "lick" anything bigger than a house cat, but the fact that we'd made her angry usually cowed us.

She also used the word "cunning" (pronounced, "cunnin') the way I've heard British people use it: to mean cute, beguilingly adorable, etc. Babies were always "cunnin'": Ain't he a cunnin' baby!"

I also grew up calling the basement entrance door the "bulkhead" (mom grew up on a small island where fishing was the main industry). The basement was the "cellar".

Around here, it's called The Bilco Doors: "I went down to the Bilco doors to get some of the tomatoes we canned last summer." It's because a company called "Bilco" makes just about all the residential basement doors in CT, so it's used to refer not just to the doors themselves but to the whole basement. Word to your marketing staff, Bilco.

My mother used to refer to a cup of coffee or tea as a "cuppa" ("Now where did I put my cuppa?"), and would request a "heater" rather than a "refill".

I occasionally hear expressions my mother used on Monty Python, usually when John is being a ratbag housewife. I just can't think of any right now.

My dad used to threaten to "tan your hide"--meaning he'd spank us so much our skin would toughen up. When he wanted us to go to bed, he'd tell us to "head for the hills". I think he thought that was funny. He did have a good sense of humor--better than my mother's; that whole side of the family seemed to be humor-challenged. Not that they didn't laugh, they just didn't understand most jokes, and didn't know how to make a joke. She did like Fawlty Towers, at least. They all understood slapstick and silliness and situational humor (hotelier finds a stiff in a room; doesn't want to alarm the other guests; tries to get the stiff out without anyone noticing), but wit and wisecracks belonged to my dad's side of the family.

Vale you know it's not worked out to well when you have to explain it! Try to be low brow like Cad.

Lol, you say that only because you want to gainsay Cad!

Psssst I googled for Liberace's first name!


A "mom-ism"

"In the moon's world": that was my mum's answer to my question "Before being in your tummy, where was I?" Actually she explained me pretty soon how children are conceived and born, she even bought an illustrated book, a suitable book for a 4-5 year old. I understood but couldn't conceive of my non-existence before my parents made me. So I kept on asking. "Before you met dad and married him, where was I?" I must have been very annoying.

You were a beautiful idea in the mind of God.

you were all the different elements needed to make you, but in other forms... dare I say, even scientifically, the physical you (that is, the things that make up you, and me for that matter) existed... perhaps it is just the cognitive being explored now. .. you are a vehicle for cognitive progression. A pushing outward from the inward, so to speak.

how's that for non-god answer?

I had an illustrated book too! I'll go find it!!

I bought an illustrated book for Miss Thing when she got to a certain age, because I didn't want her to be uninformed. She found the whole thing horribly embarrassing and threw the book in the trash. Maybe I jumped the gun a bit--she was 11 years old, I think. But judging from the stories she told me about what was being said on the school bus, it was long overdue.

She's nearly 14 now, and STILL doesn't want to even think about it. She didn't even like the brief "sex" scene in "Avatar". (The whole scene will be in the DVD, I'm told, but I don't know how explicit it is. She'll just have to hit the FF(s) button.)

OP! I HAD THE SAME BOOK!



What a flashback!

Did you make that funny collage? It's

MrsT, my mother bought that book for me when I was about 5, I guess, and I wasn't shocked at all. I started feeling uncomfortable about sex when I was about 10 and some boys at school talked about it as if it was a dirty thing, laughing and saying the word "fuck".

With regard to Quart's answer, I like it but I think it might be too difficult for a 4-5 year old to understand.

Cad, "You were but a twinkle" in your daddy's eyes" sounds cute.

My mum believes in God but when I was a child she was going through a sort of a faith crisis (when she was a child and a teenager, her mother gave her a strictly Catholic education, so I think she had a simple rebellion phase. She gave me a Catholic education but not an overpowering one) so I think that's why she didn't mention the mind of God.

Is it a 'pop up' book?

wait.. I still don't get it..

so, where do babies come from?

I think cad would suggest teaching Miss Thing otherwise.

jeez cad, I can't believe you'd even suggest that! not even funny!!!

(eh hem... *nervous laughter*... ppshaaa)

so! who brought this bean dip?

quick quick delete delete!!!

[he's here!]


"Hey Cad, whatcha up to?. . .

oh, nothing much. . . just talking about football and shopping. . ."

no wonder drunk people fall forward. those look heavy.

in fact, it boarders on noble.

I waited for someone's marriage... don't know who's.. but I'm glad they got hitched.

"Quaters"?

I would only knock them down so that I could heal them with my hippy-dust.

Then we would make love not war, and draft beer not people, and join the British R.N. it really is something other-than-else!

oh! no, no... not that kind of hippy-dust. . .

the kind that peter-pan uses to fly...

wait.. that may have made matters worse.

how about we'll hop into my VW vanagon and fly like the magic school bus.

oh, damn. I'll come in again.

oh, it's nothing.. just a fictional material used to signify peace in powdered form. .

I mean, a powder.. well.. not a powder.. a snow of sorts..

....

damn.

Interesting. I had some yogurt that tasted kind of funny last night. I threw the rest away, but I *did* have very strange dreams...

I can't remember now, but I remember waking up and whining to Mr. Thing, "Oh, I'm having such awful dreams, it's hardly worth sleeping!" In one of them, Miss Thing stuck her foot in the water at a river's edge, and the current grabbed her and pulled her under, and she was washed over a waterfall, while I was screaming, "My baby! My baby!"

And now for something completley different -

This

I had some marionberry jam yesterday that smelled a bit fermented. . .

reminded me that the word fermented reminds me of this:

Orson Wells' drunk outtakes

I know, poor guy, too bad he was like this towards the end, but I'm sorry, it just gets funnier and funnier each time I watch it.



MMMMMMMMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH THE French.....