One more post about my wacky family before everybody heads out. We are sitting around reminiscing and my cheeks hurt from laughing. We started with Op, which I learned from a fourth-grade teacher, and moved on to Ubbi Dubbi. I reminded my brother of the time in 1999 when I was trying to cheer him up and started talking to him in French plus Pig Latin. This may strike you as a rather novel tactic for cheering someone up, but it made him laugh out loud, then and now.
My mother said, "What about French plus Pig Latin plus Ubbi Dubbi?" In rather fractured French (but impeccable Pig Latin and Ubbi Dubbi) I said, "Can you understand me?" Everybody cracked up. (Talk about an easy crowd. I suspect that if my husband had been in the room, he and my SIL might have looked at each other with a what-did-we-get-ourselves-into? kind of look.)
I've always thought of my fascination with language as a weird little quirk of mine, but tonight I am thinking that the first steps of the path to the PhD were plowed by a family that thinks Ubbi Dubbi is a laugh riot. I told my 8yo we'd have to have a quick goodnight tonight because he was up late seeing Tangled. We got sidetracked talking about glottal stops in Hawaiian and aspiration bursts in Korean. It makes me wonder what he'll be like when he's the hurried parent: what kinds of conversations will derail his plans for a speedy tuck-in? It's one of the blessings of life in a family: shared fascinations, shared joys.
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