Leaving our words behind

I have no idea what a treasure trove I'm living with.

Prompted by Mr. Verb's post today I just asked Buffy as she walked past me: You know that game kids play where you walk around a circle patting people on the head... Here she interrupted me: Yeah. Duck Duck Grey-duck... Why?

I was so sure she wouldn't say that. And she had no idea why my eyes grew big and my jaw dropped. She remembers hearing about duck-duck-goose but she was shocked to learn that the grey duck variation is largely a Minnesota thing.

I say the study of children's terminology is especially interesting because those are often lexical items that are learned from other children. Adults often leave their first nest but they don't spread the terms too quickly because you don't often find a bunch of adults sitting around playing duck-duck-anything. And those that do probably don't have much influence over children.

So we use our childhood argot then leave it behind as we pick up our new lingo acquired at a different time in a different place.

For this to be true we need to grant that kids learn language from kids. Makes sense. I never heard my parents call the woodlouse a potato bug. But that's what I learned as a child splitting time between Worthington Ohio and Beltsville Maryland. A few years ago that I saw an episode of Fear Factor refer to the Jerusalem cricket as a potato bug and my childhood died a little. Mostly from watching that horrible show.

Do we have a language full of lexical items abandoned on the playground waiting for the next pair of grubby little hands to pick them up?

Safer than lawn darts

Quick question.

What do you call the game played by throwing little bags at a board like the one pictured here?

I've heard the following:

bean bags
bunghole
cornhole
tailgate toss

One friend responded saying I'm going to say bag-in-the-hole because it's filthy.

Not all answers need be so judgmental. And if you're able to supply any regional information that'd be great too. A friend introduced me to the game in North Dakota where all I heard was bean bags.

Over the river and through the woods

Back in December Buffy and I visited her family in Minnesota. We always have a chance to visit her grandmother for a few hours to hear her tell her favorite stories. She's a dear woman. Intense, honest and quickly jubilant. She laughs loudly at every joke with a tickled Oh you rascal! Every time we visit she scurries over to the fridge to pull out her recycled Country Crock container filled with spritz cookies and crispy peanut butter bars. And our conversation is always at the little kitchen table where she offers Buffy a mug of delicious Folgers Crystals instant coffee while I get my fill of summer sausage with mild colby on a roll.

She's 82 years old. 80 of those years lived in MN. Every time when we remind her that Buffy's studying renaissance and comparative literature and I'm studying linguistics Grandmom makes the connection to her own studies. Ohh!? she exclaims You know spelling was my best subject.

During the last visit she saw me scribbling something on my hand. What are you writing there? she asked. Buffy knew immediately that I had heard her grandmother say something noteworthy. Of course I couldn't tell her that. She's dear but she's also a little sensitive. Oh I'm just writing down some ideas for how to teach my class I said. So here's what I was really writing down:

• She was speaking of having recently moved to a new house. Of the old house and its new tenant she said
  
  "I won't go there after he once moves in."
  
  Looks like a shuffled blend of after he moves in and once he moves in? It's almost like he splits up the slot that would normally be held by either after or once and the both sprouted up -- one on each side. Of course that's not an actual theory.



• Telling us that her husband forbade something (I can't remember what):
  
  "Him told me I couldn't"
  
  Buffy insists she does this knowingly in order to sound endearing and childlike. That may be. The context supports the possibility. I've heard her use it several times so I'm going to start listening for this accusative in a non-coordinated structure.



• While telling us a story about an event that tried her patience and confused her and made her feel like she was losing her mind:
  
  "I was ready for the fox farm."
  
  I found 3 Google™ hits for "ready for the fox farm."
  
  One hit from Dan Small OUTDOORS for a story by George E Wamser who says he "has turned the corner towards fall in life, but is not ready for the fox farm yet!" He lives in Oconto, Wisconsin.
  
  
  One Google™ Book Search result from Beyond the Freeway: Stories of Fascinating Times that Have Faded Away by Peter Benzoni who writes "The mules that pulled the cars out to the station were getting old. They were ready for the fox farm." Google™ provides a map of "places mentioned" for the book and there's a clear cluster of mentions in northern Wisconsin spreading into northeastern Minnesota and the western Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Benzoni attended high school in Hurley, Wis.
  
  The third hit takes us to Bookreporter.com for an excerpt from a book by Margo Howard who collected letters from her mother Esther Pauline Friedman Lederer. On 21 October 1960 Esther wrote "The Jaguar in the meantime is ready for the fox-farm. Damned thing is the worst car mechanically we have ever owned. It is in the garage again . . . stopped dead on me."
  
  Among the stories Esther tells her daughter are several anecdotes about her good friend Hubert H Humphrey. Humphrey was then senator from Minnesota and became a friend when they were living in Eau Claire Wisconsin. Margo writes:
  
  

  Hubert Humphrey, from Minnesota, became a family friend when we lived in Wisconsin and Mother was a player in Democratic politics. They first met when she was in the Senate gallery listening to him deliver a speech and sent down a note asking to meet him.

  
  
  When Margo was applying to colleges she found herself with fewer options than she had expected. Even her safety school didn't accept her. Of course it was Pennsylvania. Not a very safe net. Humphrey sent Margo's mother a note saying
  
  

  Tell Margo that I have written a recommendation for her to Brandeis University. She will not only be permitted to enter as a result of that recommendation, but most likely become the Dean of Women or Campus Queen on the day of registration. When Humphrey recommends they are recommended.

  
  
  Margo was of course accepted.
  
  I'm sure several of you know Friedman Lederer's famous alias. The name of the book is Ann Landers in her own words: Personal Letters to Her Daughter.
  
  Three hits are a thin example of a regional expression. But I'm not sure what else to think. Has anyone else heard this phrase? As Grandmom used it the phrase it was akin to "ready for the loony bin." But the other examples sound more like "ready to head out to pasture." Can anyone connect it (with these or any other meanings) to Wiscon-sota? Mr Verb?

The spanjo can make it anywhere

Some of my favorite memories of undergraduate silliness were the great smokeouts of basement Cooley. Emu, Nature Boy, Big John and the King would each light up a huge cigar and choke the halls with a sweet cloud of Dominican smoke. But we weren't trying to act like grownups.We also regularly checked the door of The Halfway Inn Halfass at 3:30am to see if it was latched. When it wasn't we were able to satiate all our childish Mint Chocolate Chip and Superman ice cream needs.

Barry Popik has posted to ADS-L a brief report on the travels of an excellent Ann Arbor sandwich: the spanjo. The notable nosh--native to East Quad's Halfass (yes--just off basement Cooley)--has made it to the Big Apple. (For info on the city's nickname see Popik) Of the sandwich's journey he writes

I was reading today in Gothamist.com about a sandwich shop in NYC that offers the "spanjo" sandwich. It's spreading outside of Ann Arbor! (Too bad the Wikipedia entry was deleted last year [because] the sandwich wasn't popular enough.)

Alas. It deserves a page and more.

In his post he includes bits and pieces from Gothamist™, the menu from Papa Lima Sandwich in Brooklyn, Urban Dictionary, an RC wiki, a Friendster comment, a discussion thread regarding the deletion from Wikipedia (do a text search for "spanjo"), and an ILX bulletin board about Ann Arbor (A²~AA).

Mash all the recipes together and the sandwich is made of cream cheese, melted cheddar, Swiss Cheese, spliced apple, sauteed apples, and sprouts, on bread (possibly wheat, possibly toasted)--and some start by calling it a grilled cheese with some of the above. (Would that "spliced apple" be a typo for 'sliced-'? I remember them being sliced, not spliced--unless you consider that every ingredient is spliced into one sandwich. No--sliced.)

As I ordered the spanjo it was a grilled cheese of cheddar on wheat, with cream cheese, alfalfa sprouts and crunchy sliced apples. And that's the variety we'd expect from a weird sandwich in a strange dorm in a little cafe that says "Halfway Inn" on the wall (and all brochures and official web pages) but is known by everyone in EQ as The Halfass.

I first learned of the spanjo from my friend Susan who started at Michigan a year before I did. She told me I had to live in East Quad because that was the only dorm that promised to understand me. It was home to the Residential College where going to class in a bathrobe was common. It was the dorm that had Resident Fellows instead of Resident Assistants. Why? Just to be different.

Why I otter!

Let's stick with regional issues. A friend recently sent a note saying

I want to know if you've heard of any other names for the ice treat I'm eating in my profile picture.

What kind of ice treat is she eating you ask? Well...Freeze Pops or Freezie Pops or Freezer Pops or Flav-Or-Ice or Mr Freezie or Mr Freeze or Otter Pops. (There is an unfortunate polysemy with one of those.)

I had never heard Otter Pops. It was provided by one of our West Coast representatives. I assume the playfulness of otters has something to do with the name. You know--how they play around in the water like little kids do in the summer. Running up and down the Slip 'n Slide. Taking breaks to enjoy their regionally named flavored ice treat.



Any other suggestions for why they're named so? Any other names you've heard of?