Trusting Gods: it’s your phone
February 3, 2010
I called my parents’ house a couple of days ago because I wanted to ask my sister a question. Brother #2 answered the phone. His girlfriend was over and when he called to my sister and said “It’s your phone!”, Brother #2′s girlfriend asked him what he said and he said that he told his sister that the phone was for her. She said she had never heard “It’s your phone!” used to express that particular sentiment.
Similarly when someone in the family says something unbelievable and we want to confirm that it is in fact a truth and not a lie, we will ask “Trusting Gods?” This one makes me laugh when I think of what we’re actually saying because it makes no real sense. I mean we are a Christian household so perhaps we’re trying to say “If you trust in God you wouldn’t lie to me”? I have no idea how it developed but that is definitely our version of “For real?” or “Are you serious?”
We are an odd bunch, from my dad, who is the king of made up words, to my mom who has cute turns of phrase like “I bursted into cry” instead of “I burst into tears” (likely due to the fact that English is not her first language).
What expressions or traditions does your family use or have that would seem weird to an outsider?
I don't know if this is weird or not, but I grew up saying "put up the laundry," as in, "Oh, I need to put up the laundry." My sister's ex-husband said we were all INSANE for saying that. He HATED it and tried really hard to train us all out of it.
Somewhere along the line, my brother and I came up with the phrase, "The rain is making ballerinas!" Which means, it's raining so hard that the droplets are bouncing back up in a splash. If you look next time it's raining, you can see that the splash coming back up looks kind of like a ballerina in a tutu.
Annalie used to say, "Toku!" for thank you when she was a baby, and we still say that sometimes.
Nice post! I just wrote an entry similar to this.
http://www.ruthieounaegbu.com/aaot/wordage/
Made up words are cool. I use them all the time and just go on like people should know them.
Reread this. Love it. Trusting Gods! I wonder how that came to be… haha
My cousin and her college friends started saying "jesus hell" and it has totally taken over in our family vernacular.
I used to say "my foots dizzy" when I meant that it was asleep/had pins and needles.
And I just learned that I said "the tooth dude" and not the tooth fairy when I was little because I knew it was my dad. Hah, hilarious.
This post gave me a chuckle. My MIL (whose first language is not english) used to say to the children = "Take your coat on" For some reason I loved that phrase.