HALLIE EPHRON: Here in New England it's a gorgeous spring. We've had so much rain and no unseasonably warm days, the flowering trees and bushes are spectacular. The forsythia is starting to fade but lilacs are about to burst. Cardinals are loudly claiming their territory, robins are hopping around in search of worms. My garden is full of baby bunnies. And the lawn needs to be mowed.
I've started doing the NY Times crossword puzzles M-T-W (after that they get too hard and I get cranky) and a clue in a recent puzzle was "Sound of spring" - four letters starting with B.
The Times thinks the correct answer is BOING but I know it should be BOINK.
The stone bench that marks my husband's grave says BOINK, and I he'd approve, though I imagine it's a head-scratcher to strangers spotting the engraved word.
Our BOINK goes back to many years ago when we were living in a 9th-floor apartment on Manhattan's upper west side (West End Ave and 98th St., if you know the city). Our wonderful neighbors, Eve and Joe Cimmet lived on the 4th floor. I was teaching 3rd grade in a public school and Jerry was finishing on his doctorate in physics when we both came down with the flu. I remember our double bed was drifting across the room because we were both coughing (and for some reason, hiccupping) so much. We were miserable, and hadn't been able to shop for food in days.
It was Groundhog Day and our doorbell rang. I dragged myself out of bed and opened the door and there, on the floor just outside in the hall, was a pot roast, still warm and in its cooking pot.
But between me and the pot roast, in the doorway suspended in mid air on transparent fishing line, were massive cutout letters B-O-I- N-K.
Of course we both collapsed laughing. We had to cut the fishing line to reach the pot roast, which was delicious and therapeutic, even before we'd taken our first bite.
Ever since then, Jerry drew groundhogs in his cartoon cards. Groundhogs popping up out of the ground on groundhog day, out of birthday cakes, out of Santa's bag. Every holiday and event was an opportunity to reprise groundhogs and BOINK.
Is there a made-up word that your family has as its touchstone.
Your "Boink" story is precious, Hallie . . . .
ReplyDeleteThe girls often made up words . . . "doof" was their favorite [meaning, of course, food] . . . it's the one that still manages to find its way into our conversations . . . .
oh, talking backwards! My kids used to do that. Naoami's name was I-Moan and Molly's was WHY-Moll.
DeleteWhat a priceless memory, Hallie. And such wonderful neighbors, to care for you, and with good humor that cemented the experience firmly into the fabric of your married life.
ReplyDeleteMy husband makes up words all the time, and naturally I can't think of any that aren't so regional they wouldn't make sense to anyone. But when my oldest daughter was about three, she referred to a good-looking man of our acquaintance as "handspert", instead of handsome. That stuck for a long time. Just the other day we were also reminiscing about a family trip to Yosemite, and how a misheard name changed Bridal Veil Falls to Bridesmaid's Falls, complete with a hilariously inventive narrative of how the name came to be.
Ooh my husband would have had a ball making a cartoon out of Bridesmaid's Falls.
DeleteHe sure could have! With humorously ungainly maids.
DeleteAww. I love that story - and how Jerry adopted the groundhog!
ReplyDeleteA friend long ago called the wind chill factor the windshield factor, so that became a favorite. My son used to refer to the furnichair, which makes perfect sense, as does the back yarden my goddaughter said, as well as the garageway. I've adopted all of those.
Yes, I suppose the groundhog became his mascot.
DeleteHa ha, FB (or Meta) still keeps changing "windchill" into "windshield". It hsppened to me again just yesterday
DeleteIf you don't do it yourself, autocorrect is happy to screw-up your words and your intentions. We have a Goodspeed Opera House here and yesterday autoocorrect changed Goodreads to Goodspeed.
DeleteJUDY: I saw that autocorrect change to Goodspeed. That was for the US only Goodreads giveaway for Jenn's new book, right?
DeleteRight. I can make a change to my comments on Facebook from my computer but not from my phone. Hah.
DeleteI know! So annoying that we can't edit FB comments by phone. Have to add another comment with the correct word. Yeesh.
DeleteI love the BOINK story!
ReplyDeleteWhen one of my nephews was little, instead if saying it was foggy out, he said it was FROGGY out. That one has stuck around for decades!
Makes complete sense to me...
DeleteThat's another one. I often refer to the frog bank rolling in!
DeleteI love your boink story! We didn't have any made up words that I can remember, but my brother and I went through a period when we nearly drove my mother nuts speaking pig-Latin.
ReplyDeleteOi-aye vay-aye.
Delete:-)
DeleteWhat a lovely memory, Hallie. BOINK!
ReplyDeleteI know we have our own made up words but right now I can’t think of one, at least not one for the public!
But my children had a couple of doozies:
Glosper = lobster
Hangumer = hamburger
Sorry. Not very awake yet. Much love
My daughter used to talk about upticopters
DeleteOh that reminds me, my younger sister used to say "hela-hoppers" for helicopters.
DeleteWe had "hepiters" here in California and they were a great source of interest. Also "mazagines" and "nabanas" :)
DeleteWe lived in NE Ohio when our older kids were small. Tornado warnings and alerts were common in the spring. The kids called them "tomatoes" and still refer to the "Big Tomato" which took down half the trees in the area.
ReplyDeleteAnd cloudy with a chance of meatballs!
DeleteThat is a terrific story of neighborliness, Hallie and of friends who somehow know exactly when and how to make you feel better. I don't think I'll put it on my sister's tombstone (her kids wouldn't let me!), but when she was little, my sister called aluminum foil "foilet paper." I guess she and I are the only ones left now who remember that, but our family said it quite often.
ReplyDeleteJust curious how it came up in conversation... curious midns.
DeleteHow did foil come up in the conversation? As in: "Why don't you wrap those leftover cookies in foilet paper."
DeleteSuch a lovely story Hallie! I can practically taste the pot roast. Jerry was a pip:) xo
ReplyDeleteHe was that.
DeleteHallie, that is such a sweet precious memory! Who knew that having the flu could result in something like that. When my granddaughter was very small she could not pronounce words that started with the letter R. They always came out with a Y sound. We had taken my pup to the vet and in the waiting room there was a man that asked her the dog's name. Yocky, she said. Yocky? What kind of name is that he wanted to know. I glared at him but in our tales ever after Rocky became Yocky.
ReplyDeleteThat's so sweet...
DeleteI love that story Hallie - it was so vivid I felt I was there in the room with you coughing and hiccupping and opening the door to the pot roast & BOINK. I think Boink is much better than Boing which reminds me of the word boring for some reason.
ReplyDeleteWhen our youngest daughter was around 2 she couldn't say cereal please and it came out "lulabees", so ever since then we've called cereal lulabees.
We tend to have nicknames for each other in our family.
Our daughter requested cucumbers: yumbers.
DeleteI think that the cartoon Calvin and Hobbes often used the word BOINK with large print and exclamation marks, when either Calvin or Hobbes or both saw something eye-opening. When I was in university the same word meant an interaction between two people best done alone – as in boinking.
ReplyDeleteOur family word is some-jezzely-good, often used to refer to the repast just finished. Newfoundlanders of whom there are many in our town used a word for jezzely that was not allowed said out loud in our household, hence the need for editing.
My husband was a HUGE calvin & hobbes fan! We have ever book/compendium. Plus all the Pogo books which are full of wonderful weird word mangles.
DeleteI remember my sister saying pisketti instead of spaghetti. My all time favorite is when my son called marshmallows marshpillows. I still call them that. Oh and for some reason when we went to Mount Rushmore I kept twisting it into Rount Mushmore. Maybe it is because we watched Scooby Doo at the Drive-in in Mitchell on our way out there.
ReplyDeleteMarshpillows!! How perfect is that?
DeleteLovely story! Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteWhat a lovely story, Hallie.
ReplyDeleteI don't think any of my family ever made up words - at least none are coming to mind right now.
What a lovely memory, Hallie. Our family has always called a rabbit ‘’waboosh’’. My father started this when I was a child and my grandchildren use it too.
ReplyDeleteCritters which I am not a fan of as at this moment they are decimating my yard and breeding.
DeleteI had to build my memorial tulip garden in my back yard which is surrounded by a chain link fence, and surround the garden with decorative fencing that contains chicken wire in order to keep the rabbits and squirrels out of it. The deer won’t jump the chain link fence because there are easier pickings in the front yards of my neighborhood. My garden is in memory of my father who was a Canadian airman in WWII. He flew cover for the liberation of Holland. We always had tulips in the gardens of our homes when I was growing up. I have continued the tradition. I helped my grandson, aged five, plant tulips in their gardens in BC so the tradition lives on 🌷
DeleteThanks for sharing, Hallie! Spring is boinking all around us here in northern Ohio. Jerry's cartoons always bring a smile to my face--what a great sense of humor and talent!!
ReplyDeleteI so agree.
DeleteHALLIE: At first, I thought BOINK! was going to be about the Batman tv series because they often had written sounds like BOINK! between scenes.
ReplyDeleteLove your story about the Spring Flowers sound of Boink and very nice of the neighbors to leave a Pot Roast for you and your husband when you were sick with the flu.
Diana
Thanks, Diana - good neighbors are worth their weight in gold.
DeleteHallie, that is hysterical. I love the idea of the world being full of happy BOINKs!
ReplyDeleteWe have the usual assortment of childhood mispronunciations still in use - biscetti and bacuter particularly (spaghetti and computer, if you can't translate) but the true made up word in our family comes from a radio weather report in the 1970s. This was, of course, when you got the most up to the moment forecasts on the radio, and my mother, with three kids in school, paid close attention. We were listening while prepping dinner to see what was going to happen the next day (I should add, we lived in Syracuse, in the Great Lakes Snowbelt, so weather really was exciting and vital!)
At any rate, the announcer said, "Temperatures in the upper 20s tomorrow, cloudy with scattered flurcos." There was a pause. "That's what it says, folks. Flurcos." My mom fell over laughing, and from that moment on, the word "flurry" was never heard in our house again. We're on the third generation of saying "flurcos" - at least, during the long, cold northeastern winters, it adds some amusement.
Ha ha! It's a wonder that doesn't happen more these days with teleprompters and we all know how weird spell check can get.
DeleteWhat a wonderful story! It's always wonderful when you share Jerry's cartoons. I bet there's some head scratching going on in that cemetery.
ReplyDeleteOur family word was one my mother could not properly pronounce to save her life. Particularly. It was one of her favorites, but she always pronounced it pa tic a lily, then she would glare at whichever family member was present daring them to correct her. My brother and I always gave her cards or gifts featuring lilies.
When our oldest son was young and food didn't taste right one day, I commented that his taster must be out of whack. He said "my taster is out of wax?" To this day we all say" my taster is out of wax" when something doesn't taste right (usually due to allergies). Still brings a smile. (Barbara)
ReplyDeletethat is SO perfect!
DeleteHallie, thank you for warming my heart this morning…such a gentle “boink”, just when I needed it. Elisabeth
ReplyDeleteMy made up word for a food: “bangees” for bananas. When I was 2 or 3, Mother made me a devil costume for Halloween. I announced myself as “a devil with bangees on top.” Another one of those wonderful family only words. Elisabeth
ReplyDeleteLovely story, Hallie, and Jerry's cartoons are always such a treat. I'm going to be chuckling all day thinking about everyone's made up words. When Kayti was little she couldn't say limousine or magazine, which became limomine and mazagine. We still say both.
ReplyDeleteAwww.... xxx. When my youngest grandchild was little, he was always impatient to share whatever we all were looking at..so he'd say: KY-see? KY-see? Which we finally realized meant: could I see? So we say that all the time now.
ReplyDeleteBOINK. I love that, Hallie. Thank you for sharing such a wonderful memory and Jerry's bench is just perfect.
ReplyDeleteThis is brilliant, Hallie. I hope it’s going in the memoir! We have several family sayings but I can’t think of made up words. Our granddaughter Lizzie coined my husband’s name. He was Bapa Nono. Obviously he said no a lot!
ReplyDeleteI’ve just thought of some. Grandson TJ heard his parents saying delicioso ( Spanish for delicious) and called it “deliboso “ We still use that. And we drink motitos , not mojitos because someone got it wrong once
ReplyDeleteA saying my family used a lot, when someone was obviously wrong, was You are full of penuche oil. I thought it was perfectly normal but no one else has ever heard of it!
ReplyDeleteChris Wallace
When my daughter lived in London my grandson was only 16 months old, and fascinated with anything with wheels. For some reason, he added "lulu" to the end of motorcycle and bicycle, so "motocyclelulu" and "bicyclelulu".
ReplyDeleteMy toddler called olives "beef-loes." Not sure where that came from as it's not very similar. But we still ask to pass the beef-loes at the Thanksgiving table. ☺
ReplyDelete