Fun with words is something I really enjoy. My Dad’s side of the family had the Irish influence, so words were often used creatively and played with.

I remember sitting on my dad’s lap as a kid when he’d tell funny stories, make us spell words (I fully remember being upset because I misspelled ‘scissors’), and his rewording of cliches to make annoying replacements. For ‘Beat around the bush’, he’d say, Hesitate around the shrubbery’ and for ‘You’re in the doghouse’, it would be ‘You’re in the canine bungalow.’ To this day, my brother seldom speaks with a clear direct sentence, the consequences of exaggerating dad’s habit.

Because of this familial trait, one of my youngest who got the gist of it without the needed info kept us in stitches with such examples as this: when asked to go to the store for milk, the question that followed was, “Do you want mahoganized?”. Another time, when asked to explain sitting in the middle of the hallway floor, arms akimbo, the reply was, “I’m migrating.” That went on for a couple of years. It was really hilarious when medical subjects were the topic. Never intentional, like Dad, but still there as if some genetic force was playing around linguistically.

So for me, one of the best things about the internet is the access to some really creative language. There are some hilarious church and commercial signs, and famous roadside messages.

Thanks for feeding my habit.