My eight year old daughter, who prides herself on listening to every word we say even though she’s pretending to watch The Disney Channel, has recently become extremely frustrated to hear her father and I speak in Pig Latin. We went through the spelling-words-out-phase, and when she caught on, we had to move to spelling them backward. When she figured that out, we were in a quandry. What to do when you need to yell to your spouse in the kitchen to hide the last ice cream bar so the kids won’t find it? So, somewhere from back in my husband’s middle school brain file, he pulled out Pig Latin. Of course, we’re getting older and our Pig Latin comes out very slowly as we try to figure out what letter comes second, which now needs to be the first letter of the word. Yesterday, we sounded like a couple of sick cows. “Ooooooday oooooouyay aHntway oootay AAAAAktay UHthay idskay otay UHthay oooooolpay?” That’s, “Do you want to take the kids to the pool?” Of course, we really feel like idiots, when “the” is the hardest word to figure out how to say.

Never mind, that we could’ve walked down the street, talked to each other about going to the pool, then come home, in the time it took to utter that one sentence. The fun of it, is that our daughter can’t figure it out. After we finished our pool discussion, which literally made her stomp her feet in frustration, she turned to me and said, “I’m going to start my own language too! Sand sou sill sever sigure sit sout!”

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