Our family has lots of code words. Many of them began with things the boys said incorrectly when they were young and we just adopted them as our personal alternatives to the correct phrases. Others grew out of a desire to be discrete. When our boys needed to use the bathroom they often said they were going to “play Yahtzee” because we have a hand-held Yahtzee game in the bathroom. I’m not sure if they ever requested permission from their teachers to “go play Yahtzee” when they were at school, but it wouldn’t surprise me. It’s a hard habit to break. We probably sound pretty weird to the rest of the world.

Since Karen grew up in a missionary family in South America, it was common for Spanish words to filter their way into our lives. “Please” and “Thank you very much” were replaced by “por favor” and “muchas gracias”. It was educational for the boys and fun for all of us. Tucker had a habit of taking the game further by substituting similar sounding words for the Spanish ones we used. At one point he came up with “Grazi Mogadishu” as his alternative for “muchas gracias”. We used it for years. Language can be enormously entertaining. Read more »