Mother Tongue

The other day, I heard my son tell another kid to "stop being an utch-amagutch."

I would have thought it strange, only I have heard myself say it a hundred times. And if I'm not mistaken, I'm the one that made it up.

But it does not stop with my own creativity. I say weird things because my parents said weird things, my grandmother too.

When someone announced they had to leave, my dad used to say, "Stick around, we're gonna open a can of molasses."

If someone makes a joke at my mom's expense, she will probably retort, "T'aint funny McGee."

When I was growing up, no one else had households in which phrases like "Now you're cookin with gas!" or "You're the cat's pajamas!" were common place. I knew this because people generally stared blankly at me when I used them.

I find these sayings as strange as can be, but at the same time they make up the language I grew up with -- and what's more, they have always made me laugh.

And apparently, I'm not the only one. I worked with a woman who was very fluent in English, but for whom French was a first language. The elements of English she found the most interesting were slang and sayings like the ones I used liberally. She loved to use them, but rarely got them right. My favorite interpretation was for "between a rock and a hard place," which she crafted to be "between the stone and that cold, dark space."

It reminded me of my grandmother who could let 'em fly in two languages. I loved when she used to say, "If you believe in witches, your asshole will dry up," and then claim that it rhymed in Polish."

And I betcha it does.