Malapropisms and Mixing Metaphors - My Forte

QueenMaker walks up behind me while I'm doing the "financials" for our accountant and says, "That's wrong.  It should be 58, not 56."

Me: "No honey. That is 58.  See it says 58."

QueenMaker: "Oh.  Are you sure?"

Me: "Yes."

QueenMaker: " Oh, I guess I read it wrong. How about that one.  It seems wrong.  Shouldn't that read 184?"

Me: "It does silly.  See?  Are you wearing your reading glasses?"

QueenMaker: "No."

Me: "Well, people without glasses should not cast the first verbal stone."

QueenMaker: "Huh?

The Quotable Impulse

Damn it.  If it wasn't for UnMom with her RTT's (could be contagious) and Jen at Sprite's Keeper, keeping us going with the whirly, swirly Spin Cycle, where would I be?

Today's Spin Cycle is about words that move you, quotes that soothe you, and phrases that make you smile.

Words, quotable words, I love them.  Some of the best come from Twain and Franklin.  But great lines come from every genre.  And I'm picking a few that have stuck to me the moment I heard them. They are with me forever.

When the right moment presents itself, these quotes bubble up. I've said them aloud many times and sometimes get the confused doggy head tilt from many a folk. But every once in a while, someone gets the reference and a small laugh is heard in the back of the room.  And I know I have found a kindred spirit.

Ah, the coveted mind meld.   Priceless.



"Pretty. Handsome. Pretty, Handsome. Dr. Smith."

"Those beautiful beautiful sound of nickels, nickels, nickels."

"And your little dog too!"

"Oh what a world. What a world!"

"What a maroon!"

"Cats and Dogs! Living together!"

"That chick is toast!"

"Seven-Eleven, Ha!"  "Number please."  "Seven-Eleven, Ha!"

"Damn it Jim! I'm a doctor not a ..."

"I'm sooo tired...of playing the game."

"It says here.   ... A person can develop a cold."

"Fasten your seat-belts.  It's gonna be a bumpy night."

"In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe."

"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

"Come at me with that banana!"


One of many great Mark Twain quotes, "Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority. It is time to pause and reflect."

My hero, Benjamin Franklin's quote, "If you know how to spend less than you get, you have the Philosopher's stone."

My fifteen year old son complaining, "Why can't they let a song die with dignity?"

My niece when she was three years old, walked around my mother's house picking up various trinkets, figurines, whatever was in her reach and placing the treasures in a plastic grocery bag she carried on her shoulder.  I asked her what she was doing and told her she needed to put everything back.  She put up her hands, shrugged her shoulders, and said, "Sorry, nothing I can do.  It's in the bag."


It's in the bag folks, so head over to Jen's Spin Cycle for more of the quotable. I'll bring the potables.

Potatoes are Free Balling

This week's Spin Cycle is anything goes.  We can choose our own topic.  My Spin is my challenge with language.

I have always had a problem expressing myself verbally.  You will find a rather lengthy post describing my problem.  An example I used in that post was when I wanted Queenmaker to get the milk out of the fridge for me.

"Honey, could you, um, um get, ah, ah grass! COW! um, um, you know, liquid-y WHITE!  Cold! in big box?"

Poor guy, he didn't have a clue. He even looked around the room trying to find what I'm talking about. Bless him.

The other day I said,

"I'm going downstairs to stitch, jeans, um, um, Water! Soap! Switch-y machine! ah, ah Clean. Basket. Stuff."    Translation: I'm going downstairs to start some laundry.

But my latest, Potatoes are Free Balling. Whew. Wow. I don't even know what to say.

QueenMaker and I decided that in the future we would bake potatoes without wrapping them in foil -  Aluminum - Alzheimer connection scare. We now bake potatoes in a casserole dish.  They taste better.  Or maybe I think they taste better than being foiled because its supposedly a healthier way to go, so of course they taste better.

Anyways, I was trying to express to QueenMaker that the potatoes had a drier texture than those wrapped up in foil, which produced more steam.  I said,

"They're drier but still tender.  These potatoes were not harnessed, um, they were free from, um, um, they weren't wrapped up, um, um (hitting my head hoping for clarity). The potatoes are free balling it!"

QueenMaker, "WHAT!"

Go visit Sprite's Keeper for more individual Spins on any and all topics.

A Family Language, Spanglish and Other "Um' Sounds

Since there were five of us, just one year apart, we needed no other playmates.  We loudly interrupted each other constantly, trying to get our point of view heard or to interject a few words before a particular subject changed. When we argued, everyone chimed in, siding with one sibling in one moment and then switching sides just a few hours later. Sometimes full-blown battles would erupt. The verbal noise was intense. The games we thought up, the imaginary worlds we visited together, the monumental struggles we dramatized forged a strong bond.

As siblings, we apparently developed our own form of communication, part stutter, part symbolic speech, part hand gestures, part Spanish, part English and mostly uttering urgently the words, “Um, um…um.” Now that I think about it, that’s how our parents communicated, since they spoke Spanish at home and spoke English when they went out into the world. Most of the time, the five of us couldn’t understand our father in any language (very thick accent), so we learned to understand by listening closely, watching body language, looking for clues in facial expressions, and looking at each other a lot for consensus and translation. If you didn’t get what Papi was trying to tell you, he would get mad.

Like most moms that have large families, Mami used to point at us and go through the beginning of each child’s name before landing on the right one. “El, Ev, Na, Mo, Na, yes You.” and say “Go over and get that, the other, over there, get now!!”  And point.  Both Mami and Papi did that.  They’d point in a general direction, sometimes emphatically, not actually saying anything coherent and we had better know what they wanted or we would get in trouble. Inexplicably we learned to decipher and discern what they wanted. Oh my god, we were becoming psychic!

I came to understand that our speech pattern would garner strange looks from outsiders because we mixed our metaphors, stuttered, mispronounce words, simply left words out, made up nonsensical words or replaced words with others that seemed totally unrelated or out of context.  When I was young, I kept thinking, “What is wrong with these people? Don’t they understand English?”

Trying to communicate to Queen Maker that I wanted a glass of milk from the refrigerator, I told him, “Honey, could you, um, um, get, ah, ah, grass, cow, um, um you know, liquid-y, white, cold, in big box.  The strangest look would come over his face when these things happened.

I call this a “reference trail.” Sometimes this trail could be a long trail indeed and so obscure at times that even I am baffled.  Usually words or ideas flash so quickly in my mind that I blurt out words as though they came out of the blue making Queen Maker’s face screw up in pain.

I always felt it was caused by some unknown or yet unnamed form of dyslexia, or brain malfunction. I’ve been meaning to look into it, especially because they might name the disorder after me. I was thinking of heading up a study, but then my husband of 22 years seemed to have adapted slightly to my affliction and at rare times understands some of my reference trail so I feel vindicated.

I try to figure out why my brain chooses the words it does to prove to myself (really, Queen Maker) that I’m not just blurting words out in random. I have come to the conclusion that my brain, when struggling to find the correct words, goes through some kind of misfiring sequence and starts listing words and images that will help bring me, hopefully, to my final destination word. 

Just take a look at my asking for a glass of milk.  “Honey, could you, um, um, get, ah, ah, grass, (Glass and grass are almost spelled the same.) cow, (Cows eat grass and produces milk.)  um, um you know, liquid-y, (milk is definitely liquid-y)  white,  cold, (both milk and my refrigerator are white and cold, thus stumping me.) in big box. (A refrigerator is a very big box of a thing and milk sometimes comes in a box, thus stumping me.)  I ponder and ponder, and there are times I can trace my long reference chain of words logically enough to prove to Queen Maker that my thought processes are legitimate and say, “See, I knew what I was getting at. Really, I did.” He just shakes his head.

I’ve heard the brothers-in-laws talk about it, the Belen girls blurt out random words, so it must be a noticeable family trait.  It seems that all the Belens are afflicted by the same problem. Named by the brother-in-laws as Belenitis.  

This problem only seems to arise when speaking to non-Belens. When speaking to one another, Belens seem to know what Belens are always getting at.  This family language seems disjointed and unclear to others, but we understand it completely. Not only the mixing of Spanish and English, the “um, um, um,” sprinkled consistently throughout, but even the blurting out of random words.  

This language understood by five children, all a year apart in age, always together, and rarely separated created our own language, our own vernacular, and our own understanding, completing each other’s sentences and completing each other’s thoughts and sometimes without uttering many words at all. (Tip: When playing word games, don’t allow Belens to be on the same team. You Will Lose.) 

So the next time I say, “I’m going downstairs to, stitch, jeans, um, um, water, soap, switch-y, switch-y machine, ah, ah, clean, basket stuff.” You’ll know I’m going to do some laundry.