Thursday, February 05, 2009

Richard Noggin called, take a message

Talking in code is one of those useful skills that we as parents develop early on.

Spelling out words works fine until the kiddies learn to spell. It's a dark day in the lives of all parents hoping for moments of communicative privacy during long car trips when Junior figures out that putting letters together forms words.

The Name Game (aka the Banana Song) works until they catch the song playing on the oldies station and figure out the rules lickety-split.

Pig Latin would work just as well, however I've never been able to fully express myself using that obfuscated language method. Ix-nay on the ig-Latin-pay, or something like that.

Finally, we've turned to citing words and phrases common to our shared experiences from the past as bypasses to talking about certain topics. You know, say "Spring Break '89" and one or two shared memories pop forth, neither of which may be appropriate for young ears to hear, but help to get a point across about a certain 9-year old wanting to wear a certain inappropriate clothing item.

Then there are the more advanced forms of code-talking around the all-hearing/all-knowing/all-digesting senses of our offspring.

When conversing with her current husband about her ex-husband (and father of her eldest child), a friend of ours refers to a person known as Richard Noggin. "Richard Noggin called me today to complain about so-and-so's style of dress..."
"Ran into Richard Noggin down at the mall today with his new girlfriend and was surprised that the high schooler's were let out early today..."
"Richard Noggin forwarded another one of those emails to me today about Bill Gates giving away free money for forwarding email..."
You get the idea.

Here's hoping there are no Richard Noggin's in your lives.

Blogger's note - haven't figured it out yet? Okay, here's a hint. What is the rhyming nickname for Richard aka Rick? Next, what body part is represented by the word, noggin? Party on, Wayne

2 comments:

Patience said...

Oh! I get it!!

Heh heh heh!

Yogi♪♪♪ said...

I'm slow, but I eventually got it.