All in the Family

Does your family have special words or inside jokes? My brother has always had different names for everything. This all started when we were little and he had a hard time pronouncing the letter "l" and then he just improvised for some words. So slippers were "swippies" and a back hoe loader was a "back hoe yoder". He called tuna sandwiches "tuny sanfs" and Albertson's was re-christened "Alprinn's". My family is still ROFL (that's "rolling on the floor laughing", ya'll) over his creative word substitutions.

As he grew older, he mastered the "l" sound and yoders became loaders. But - and I'm not sure if I aided with this - he came up with new names for other things. Schuck's Auto Supply became "S - chucks" (that's ssss-chucks) and SEARS became "say-ars". The oddest, though, was "Chuck Dan".

There was a sports store in Oak Harbor called Chuck Dan and I think it went out of business, but my brother uses that as a adjective meaning, "good". As in, "That's Chuck Dan". He also says, "That's grande", meaning "that's good", even though he can speak the Español and knows "grande" really means "large". (Thank you Mrs. Graham in 10th grade Spanish.) I picked up all these phrases, too, so a converstion between us could go like this:

Me - "Are you going to Say-ars this weekend?"

My brother - "Yep."

Me - "That's grande. I'm going to S-chucks to get some windshield wipers."

My brother - "That's Chuck Dan."

Aaron - "What the f are you guys talking about?"