But back to my mother.
She was very excited the other day, as she found an article in a magazine about curmudgeons that she found amusing, and since she knew I used to call a favored uncle a curmudgeon on a regular basis, thought I would like to read it. So when we were on the phone one day she told me that she had a great article on “curmudgchkins” she would put in the mail to me.
My brain raced trying to identify what she was talking about. All I could come up with was a vision of a group of grouchy Munchkins with cigars sticking out of their mouths, denigrating the saccharin platitudes of Glinda the good witch of the North. A sight sure to spawn nightmares if dwelt upon.
But this is only one of a parade of words that my mother tortures on a regular basis.
While some of you who garden may have a compost pile, my mother is the proud maintainer of a “compote pile”.
And from time to time we eat quiche. My mother regularly makes “quish”. . . . and makes people eat it too!
(I wonder what she would make of the word “quidditch” from Harry Potter?)
I have two daughters in law. Tawny and Kynia.
Kynia is pronounced “conya”. My mother calls Tawny, Tanya and Kynia, Conny all the time. And Kynia’s daughter Alexis has been re-assigned the name “Alexa” by my mother.
It’s no use correcting her either. It’s like the names were entered wrong in the great database in the sky, and can never be updated…. Sigh.
But as expert as my mother is, she could learn a thing or two by sitting at the feet of our Rabbi, who is the master of spoonerisms. From expressing admiration for the “Deli Llama”, to his assertion that frozen vegetables are kosher as long as there are no adjectives in them, he has kept us in stitches for years.
So as a cautionary tale, even though I spell badly from time to time….
Okay okay, often.
Things could be a lot worse if my mother and the Rabbi got together and began an on line diary. The mind boogers at the thought….
I mean boggles. Everyone knows that boogers jump out from the shadows and scare you, or are those boogies? In any case the idea gives me the wallies, I mean willies. Wally is my best friend’s brother’s name.
He wouldn’t scare anybody. Although I am quite certain that if I actually saw a “curmudgchkin” I WOULD be scared out of my wits, what little I have left of them.
I’ll stop now. I don’t want you to run out of patients with me.
Uh oh.