Thursday, January 3, 2008

Stepdad-isms

I don't know if this is standard, if it's something in the gene pool or generation pool or social pool that makes some more prone than others to adopting catch phrases, or if we've all got them, and we just don't notice them in ourselves.
I saw my stepdad this past holiday, and things have been swirling around in my head since then. He and my mom are now divorced, and she's remarried to DB#1, but since my stepdad is my brother's dad he's still around, and since I spent my formative years growing up with him, he'll always be my stepdad to me. If I'm talking about my parents in a collective sense, like, "My parents used to take us here," I mean my mom and stepdad. Any reference to parents as a unit would be describing them.
Anyway, I wander. Key exchanges from my childhood/adolescense:

Stepdad (after any clumsiness or erring): Smooth move, ex-lax.

Nichole: Gosh, my neck hurts.
Stepdad: Oh really, 'cause your face is killing me!

Stepdad: I'm so hungry, I'm seeing dead relatives.

Stepdad: Are you going to the movies?
Nichole: No.
Stepdad: Well, then why are you picking your seat?

Stepdad: Comet...
It tastes like Listerine.
Comet...
It makes your mouth turn green.
Comet...will make you vomit.
So buy some comet, and vomit today.

I think that there was another one about diahrea, cha cha cha. Oh yeah, and "Beans, beans, the magical fruit, the more you eat, the more you toot, the more you toot, the better you feel, so eat your beans at every meal."
Funny how things stick with you as you get older. What sticks with you and what falls away. These turns of phrase pop into my head at random times. I long to say, "Well, your face is killing me! Ha ha ha!" when someone complains of a sore back or something. Yet I refrain, for fear of being thought as silly as I once thought my stepdad. Now I realize that these are ingrained in my mind as part of my home life. My childhood. The life with my mother and stepdad before things took a turn or two for the worse and they became miserable together.
He came over to my grandparents' house on Christmas Eve...quite chatty, although the cause of that was quite evident based on the bobbing and weaving. He said, after a discussion of how the in-laws in our family are referred to as outlaws, how he's the only one who's still invited to family events after divorce, he pats my shoulder and says, "And this...this is still my favorite ex-daughter."
Priceless. Dysfunctional. And totally priceless.

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