my husband is english. like high tea and the queen, like hogwarts and harry potter. As a confessed anglophile, I mostly love this about him. (the accent is fab and so are lots of the vacations.) but sometimes this bicontinentalism leads us to odd places and embarrassing discoveries. for instance, i present a recent conversation:
husband: hokey-cokey, little boy, you're ready to go.
me (smirking): are you saying okey-dokey or hokey-pokey?
husband: hokey-cokey.
me: well, that's not a real word. there's okey-dokey...you know...slang for okay. and then there is the hokey-pokey...the dance.
husband: i thought that was hokey-cokey too.
me: nope.
husband: i think it is.
me: only if you silly english people say it that way.
then, you know that phenomenon where you mention something obscure and then suddenly you see or hear it everywhere. well, twice in one week, i read the word "hokey-cokey," once in a book of nursery rhymes and once in a contemporary british novel. so i thought, well it really is the way those silly english people say it. until i went to wikipedia and found this, a brief and thrilling history of the hokey-pokey--which is more officially called the hokey-cokey!
well, you put your left foot in (your mouth) and you shake it all about.
wonder: am i the only one who has been saying it wrong all along?
No comments:
Post a Comment