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What are some of your funny, family allusions?? How did they come about?
Hoggirl
2129 replies214 threads Senior Member
in Parent Cafe
I love family allusions! We have actually absorbed some into our family from family friends and had others absorb ours.
Dh has a cousin who is about ten years younger than he. When he graduated from high school, we sent him a check as a gift. His thank you note was written in typical, tiny, male chicken scratch. He started right at the top of the note and only wrote one sentence so there was lot of blank space. It read, “Dear Hoggirl and Hogboy, Thanks for the cash - I sure can use it. Sincerely, Cousin.” So now, anytime anyone exchanges cash in our family, we say this line.
One time I told my father-in-law that someone a bit older that I had encountered had asked if I was related to him (he played college football for our state flagship). His reply, delivered in complete seriousness, was, “Well, I am a local folk hero.” We’ve found good use for that one as well when someone is being too braggy about themselves - “I bet you are a local folk hero.”
A good law school friend of mine told a story about her grandmother when one of her grandkids told her something she thought was crazy and disagreed with. Her response was, “Are you drunk on dope?” 😂 We’ve absorbed that one into our family and use it when someone says something we find to be preposterous.
Other family friends insisted that when their children were young and played board games and lost they had to tell their opponent, “Good game, thanks for playing.” We started doing that as well, but in a very sarcastic tone (we are a pretty competiive bunch).
Do you have any fun family allusions?
120 replies Dh has a cousin who is about ten years younger than he. When he graduated from high school, we sent him a check as a gift. His thank you note was written in typical, tiny, male chicken scratch. He started right at the top of the note and only wrote one sentence so there was lot of blank space. It read, “Dear Hoggirl and Hogboy, Thanks for the cash - I sure can use it. Sincerely, Cousin.” So now, anytime anyone exchanges cash in our family, we say this line.
One time I told my father-in-law that someone a bit older that I had encountered had asked if I was related to him (he played college football for our state flagship). His reply, delivered in complete seriousness, was, “Well, I am a local folk hero.” We’ve found good use for that one as well when someone is being too braggy about themselves - “I bet you are a local folk hero.”
A good law school friend of mine told a story about her grandmother when one of her grandkids told her something she thought was crazy and disagreed with. Her response was, “Are you drunk on dope?” 😂 We’ve absorbed that one into our family and use it when someone says something we find to be preposterous.
Other family friends insisted that when their children were young and played board games and lost they had to tell their opponent, “Good game, thanks for playing.” We started doing that as well, but in a very sarcastic tone (we are a pretty competiive bunch).
Do you have any fun family allusions?
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Replies to: What are some of your funny, family allusions?? How did they come about?
Another is at my expense...once my husband and kids were all in a parking lot and the car beside us started to leave, slowly, but I didn't realize this, I thought we were moving but knew we weren't and I said something like "I think I'm having some vertigo" and well of course that was just the most hilarious thing ever. So now when someone is slightly confused over a simple mistake, they all love to say "Vertigo! Vertigo!"
“You shut your mouth when you’re talking to me.”
We say it as a joke.
"Make it so" and "Tea, Earl Grey, hot" are on the list, as well as various lines from Gilbert & Sullivan and Tom Lehrer songs.
I know there are a million more, as word play and sarcasm run rampant in our house.
"Awesome as cheese!" is now a superlative in our home.
"I blame the parents"-source forgotten, but we say it facetiously when we're lamenting something dumb one of our kids has done.
"Spoonbill" We went on a trip with relatives that included a visit to an animal park. One relative repeatedly said all she wanted out of the trip was to see a spoonbill (the bird). We now refer to the one thing someone really wants from something as their spoonbill. "What's your spoonbill for Paris? My spoonbill's the Luxembourg Gardens."
"Bang cheese" My then two year old asked for "bang cheese". Having no idea what that was I offered a number of cheeses, American, Swiss, cream cheese, string cheese, and so on, each of which was rejected. My increasingly frustrated kid finally demonstrated what he wanted by pantomiming holding a bottle and smacking it on the bottom. "Bang, bang, bang!" Ah, Parmesan cheese! 20-something years later we still call it bang cheese.
We sarcastically use the line ftom Freaky Friday, “Make good choices today!” when someone gets out of the car.
There is a line in a family genealogy book saying our family has “sturdy common sense”. We now refer to that when someone in our family does something sensible. Someone told me I have common sense at work last week, and I explained to them that I have no choice given our family saying. 🙂
English is not my dad’s first language, so idioms could be confusing. When he was dating my mom, he once told her not to look for a gift in the horse’s mouth. That has stuck.
https://youtu.be/ipmQG8tXu_g
In our group of friends, we have been saying “snaptastic” ever since then. Always makes me smile. The kids, all adults now, roll their eyes.