I, Spooner

Every now and then, it's my job to tell you something odd and interesting about myself. So, today, I tell you this: I love Spoonerisms.

Spoonerisms (so named for Reverend William Archibald Spooner, 1844–1930, who exemplified the quirk) occur when one transposes the initial sounds of a group of words, sometimes forming new ones, (e.g., sly gap --> guy slap.) My favorites are the ones that add new meaning or commentary to the original.

The thing is, I'm doing this constantly. As I'm shopping, I reach for a packet of bound grief at the meat display. When Deborah requests that I be on dish duty, I ponder whether I should wash dishes or dash wishes. Some of them even make it out of my head, like telling a giggling Fiona that we should have named her "Sue Tilley."

Over the years, I've been mentally gathering material for a story where one of the main characters talks in nothing but Spoonerisms, and, at the end, says something completely normal, which, no one realizes until it's almost too late, was another Spoonerism, setting the scene for the final climactic actiony bit. (The setting is, of course, a greasy spoon...er.)

So, that's one quirky thing that's always going on in my head. What's going on in yours?

Power from the Sea

As I was standing around fixing things — on average, I fix a toy per day; the washing machine makes a good workbench — Aiden brought his dinosaur flashlight to me.

"Daddy, can you fix my dinosaur flashlight?"

It's a wonderful flashlight; it roars when you turn it on, and it's constructed in such a way that a kid can't disassemble it — a fact that has occasionally made it the only working flashlight in the house. It just needed new batteries, but I didn't have any in the right size.

"I'm sorry Aiden, I don't have what I need to fix your flashlight right now."
"What do you need?"
"Two C-cells."
"There's some in the fishtank."
"There are batteries in the fishtank?" I prepared to panic.
"No," said Aiden, with exasperated patience, "there are seashells."

He was so sure he was being helpful, I hated to tell him that I just needed batteries!

Young Perspectives on an Old Beverage

We were having chili, and nothing goes with that like a good glass of Guinness. The kids were intrigued.

Fiona studied the glass very carefully, and announced that it was beautiful, a sunset with fluffy clouds over a darkening sky, with fireworks. (And yes, that's pretty much how she said it, too.) I took a picture to document her description.

Aiden, on the other hand, wanted a taste. I let him have a tiny sip in his glass. "What's it like?" I asked. He considered for a moment. "It tastes like trains."

Forget what they say on labels about fruity overtones or a dark amber color, or all that frou-frou. We need to have kids describe things for us.

Aiden's Recipes

Aiden: You know how you make a elephant-hippo drink?

Me: How?

Aiden: You put a elephant-hippo in a glass of water. It tastes like elephant, but it's not really elephant. It'a actually hippo.

How to speak Andalú

Part of the joy/trials/tribulations of moving to Spain was having to learn Spanish all over again. I'd spoken it well when I was a kid in Costa Rica, but we left for southern California when I was seven or so, and that was the end of that. (Supposedly, one needs to be exposed to a language up until age ten to remember it.) Now, I still had the canto, the the song, so to speak, of the language, and I remembered some vocabulary, but I knew absolutely nothing of grammar other than what sounded right.

In many respects, this is one of the few times where I honestly say, "Thank God for television." The news, especially. Here were people who were trained to speak clearly using good grammar and pronunciation. Be that as it may, what I understood on TV, and what I understood on the street were two different matters entirely. Andaluz, the... accent? dialect? ...that they speak in Andalucía, where I was, is a lesson in great economy. I can't tell you how many times I've heard kids contract "Mamá" into "¡Maáa!" as they were yelling up to the second floor for someone to let them in. If written Hebrew gets rid of the vowels, spoken Andaluz gets rid of the consonants. I remember, very early on, one of the guys in the church youth group trying to teach me how to speak "Andalu" ("Instead of 'voy a la casa de Paco' say, "vocapáo'") ...I just stared in amazement.

So it was with a great deal of laughter that I watched this video, "Curso Dandalú." Yes, normally you'd say, "Curso de Andaluz," but we're going for authenticity...

Note: The video may not make much sense unless you speak Spanish.

Note: Even if you do, it may not make sense anyway.

There are worse ways to choose a name

When I dropped by work yesterday to show off Risanna, Marti asked about our choice in middle names.

Marti: Why Pepper?

Me: We like peppers. If you've ever eaten at our house, you figure that out pretty quickly.

Marti: I figured it was something like that. So... what if you had really liked bananas?

Me: Well... Risanna 'Nanna has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?

Verbatim

"It's not long like the Jell-O, it's short like the castanets."

—Fiona, discussing Deborah's hair

Nothing Like a Good Story...

It could be because my sisters and I grew up having stories read to us. (Thanks, Dad.) Or, it could be that, with my head so immersed in right-brain stuff at work, my left brain needs something to do, lest it chatter away to my distraction. Whatever it is, there's nothing like a good story to help me sit down and keep plugging away at whatever I'm doing.

Now, obviously, I can't go reading books while I'm correcting manuscripts or retouching photos, but I have found that I can listen to them... and that, rather than distract me from what I'm doing, it keeps me planted. My feet don't wander when I want to know what happens next, and I don't think of a dozen things I'd like to say when someone else is reading.

The real trick has been finding good stuff to listen to. I've listened to the Harry Potter audiobooks (Jim Dale is an incredible narrator), and discovered the Septimus Heap and His Dark Materials books, but the talking books selection at the library has largely been hit-and-miss. While I keep trying books there, I have found a few reliable sources for stories done right:

Podiobooks.com
There's a pretty wide variety here, and I've yet to find a story that wasn't worth finishing — which I find remarkable, given that most of the stories are done by the authors themselves in home studios.

Escape Pod
All sci-fi, all the time, with many new and notable names of the genre, reading half-hour to hour-long stand-alone stories. Sci-fi is a fairly broad genre, but this keeps close to traditional sci-fi while also linking to other, often-mingled genre stories in the form of Pseudopod (horror) and Podcastle (fantasy) if those are more your cup of tea. The presenter (and often-as-not narrator) Steve Eley throws out many thought-provoking bits in his intros and (as the neologism goes) out-tros.

The Secrets of Harry Potter
Not stories, per se, but commentary on stories, specifically the Harry Potter series. Although this claims to be a Catholic podcast, but there's really not much that a Protestant should take offense to. Production and content vary from episode to episode, but for the most part, it's worth wading through some of the awkward bits to get the nuggets of insight into the mythological and theological symbolism that J.K. Rowling's books are drenched in.

Three conversations

Deborah and the kids were getting ready to go to Science Central this morning, while I was getting ready to head off for work. (Which is grossly unfair. I want to go to Science Central...) While I was pulling on my socks, Aiden came and found me.

Aiden: Daddy, daddy, daddy, are you going to work?
Me: Yes.
Aiden: OK, just make sure you come home.
Me: OK, Aiden.

It was the sort of thing where you laugh for five seconds, and think for two hours.

* * *

As I was shaking out a bag this morning, something wet and black slipped out, streaked my leg, and made several blots and a lump on the floor.

"Ack! What in the world was that?"

Fiona hurried over and looked at it in fascination.

"It's a splatterpillar!"

I still don't know what it was — or used to be — but Fiona's neologism was certainly apt.

* * *

Aiden: Daddy, daddy, daddy*, would you get me the golf ball from the Everything Room?
Me: What's it doing in there?
Aiden: Sitting still?

---

Notes
* Daddy, daddy, daddy: When Deborah reads books, she's largely lost to the world. After some research, we figured out that you have to call her at least three times to actually get her attention. Fiona gets around this by combining a greeting with a flying leap, but Aiden and I resort to the triple hail. Aiden, however, has gotten the idea that this is what you need to do to get anyone's attention, not just Deborah's while she's reading. The fact that he also tends to stutter a bit, and restart his sentences often, makes for some rather recursive conversations.

The most creative lie I've heard all day

On my way to Wal-Mart to get a new car battery (9 years is good for a battery, but most good things come to an end) I turned right instead of left and started looking at minivans. The dealer only had one that I judged to be in my price range, and, sure enough, when I told the guy what I was willing to pay, he tried to keep smiling, and asked his boss, whose smile also faltered for a second, and together, they both pointed out the same minivan that I had been looking at.

Of course, they gave me a price that was exactly a thousand higher than what I'd said, but only after he "brought it down a bit" from a higher figure, because he'd "agreed on that price for someone else." I smirked to myself, but let him keep talking. A third guy wandered closeby as the boss kept going. "There's totally nothing wrong with it, man. We went all through it" — and here he paused, as though a guilty conscience had overtaken him — "well, except for the cupholder. That's the reason the guy sold it. So that's —" "Oh, we took care of that," said the third guy. "Oh, you did?" — and he turned back to me with a broad gesture to say, "Well, there you go!" as guy #3 walked away.

With that well-rehearsed little ploy, I decided it was time to have some fun of my own.

"So, what can you do on a trade-in?" I asked. The boss blustered about for a bit, and then got back on track. Things weren't going the way he planned, but he was determined to make this sale, if only to show his new employee how it was done.

"Well, what have you got?"

"A 1977 Pontiac Phoenix." I swear, the guy just about cried.

"Oh, you couldn't have made it something easy, could you? What's up with the weird cars this week? We had one guy bring in a Javelin, and there was this '59 wagon..." He was being genuine, and I laughed. America is a weird, wonderful place for car culture. I made a mental note to tell the next dealer that I had a 1952 Lada. Or maybe a Talbot. Or both.

He set about trying to determine the value the hard way.

"Well, does it run? Does it drive?" (There's a distinction between the two.)

"Yep." Well, it will as soon as I go get a battery for it across the street, I thought to myself.

"Really?"

"Dude, it's had two owners. My grandfather, and myself. I know for a fact that it was driven once a week to the grocery store. Hasn't even broken a hundred thousand miles yet."

At this point, I was selling him a car, and the irony wasn't lost on him.

"Where is it?"

"It's at my house, in Winona Lake." What, I thought, are you going to go get it right now? ...yeah, he probably would, if he could make the sale.

"Does it have any rust?"

"Yeah, a bit. Around the wheel wells. But don't worry, anything that fell off, I kept. I still have the rear bumper." I grinned. He buried his face in his hands.

Poor guy didn't make a sale today. But I had fun, got some good practice for the real thing, and I discovered that unseen, funny old cars make interesting bargaining chips!

Now, if Deborah and I applied the techniques we used on the street vendors in Ecuador...