Writing Promt
Mangled Words That Are Here To Stay
How childhood miscommunications become part of the family language
When my kids learned to speak, they mangled certain words to suit their tiny tongues. For some reason, we never stopped saying those mangled words. I suspect we just like them and they make us happy.
For example, bathing suits will always be baby suits, sunscreen will forever be known as sun scream, and pajamas will remain pa’s llamas.
We also don’t say The United States of America. No, we pledge our allegiance to the United Steaks of the Calendar, which is how it was pronounced when the kids learned it in pre-school.
My favorite, though, is the term we now use to describe the kitchen sink.
We bought the house we are living in from a couple that was about to lose it. We bought it “as is” and thought we got a great deal. But, the house had been badly neglected as a result of the previous owner’s financial situation, so we had a lot of work to do to bring things up to snuff (and sometimes, up to code.)
When we moved in, the kitchen sink didn’t drain right and needed new fixtures. My husband took a look and decided that he could do the work so we could save some money on a plumber.
He headed to Home Depot and I headed to my office. The kids headed outside to play with their new friends.
It seemed to me that he’d been gone for hours, when my 4-year-old son walked in from outside. I asked him if he had seen his daddy yet. He replied very casually that yes, daddy had come home and was now back in the kitchen fixing the fuggensink. He skipped out of my office to go back outside with no worries, happy that he could be of assistance.
He was fixing what? I started toward the kitchen to see what he was up to. Obscenities assaulted me the whole way. I heard fucking sink! And, goddamned mother-…. and an abundance of creative cussing. Apparently, my son heard it too.
From that day on, we had a new word in our language to remind us of my husband’s bad daddy moment. Fuggensink will hold a special place in our hearts just like the other mangled words for the rest of our lives.
Thanks to Hollie Petit, Ph.D. for the wonderful prompt!
