Ya Hadda Be There...

We both love learning new words.  And I have a new one for you — idioglossia, or a language invented and spoken by one or a very few people (idio-, Greek, private or separate; and glossia, Greek, tongue).  Twins sometimes develop a private language, most often a variant on their family's home language but with words or phrases that only they know and use.

Most couples have an idioglossia of sorts, built from years of backstory and inside jokes and knowing looks across the table.  Ours includes "tractoring," which is a cat's gait of resolute determination; "W," a preserved mis-hearing of "I love you;" and endless nonsensical names for the cats, like "boogus" and "moosey" and "rufulous."  But Nora and I have some odd added components drawn from our own unique brain paths.  I'm taking up the challenge to give you an example, but I'll understand if it doesn't translate.

So Nora is a plucker. Maybe not a nice thing to say about one's wife, but there it is.  We'll be lying in bed in the morning, and she'll start to scrape at a piece of dry skin on my temple or pull one of my unruly eyebrow hairs.  I know that she means it with the utmost love and respect, but there are times when I feel a little protective of my dermis.  So anyway, one morning last week, she's looking at me, hazy with devotion and soft feelings, and she says, "you've got some exuberant nose hairs that need trimming."  Not exactly the romantic cooing one wants to hear in the morning. But it got me spinning out this story about how most little girls want a Malibu Barbie, but this one got a Nose Hair Herb.  "Oh, mummy, a Nose Hair Herb!  That's just what I wanted—how did you know?  He's so cute.  And look, he has little keratosis spots.  That's so precious."

And then she opens her other Christmas gift.  "Oh, and mummy, it's My Defective Pony!!  Oh, how wonderful!  Look how cute he is with that little stumpy deformed leg!  Clip clop scraaape... clip clop scraaaape..."

By this time, Nora is literally unable to breathe with laughter.  Every time she's just about to recover, all I have to say is "clip clop scraaaape" and it's like lighter fluid on the fire all over again.

So now for the past few days, whenever we think of someone who's "not quite right," as we used to say, one of us will say "clip clop scraaape" and start laughing.  Oh, and we mean it with love, we really do, just like Nora's close examination of my nasal plumage is a sign of devotion.  You just have to get used to it.