Wednesday, May 6, 2015

Oh, Poo!

When my niece Ericka was around 4, I flew to England for a visit from my home in Boston. Ericka's parents decided to record an audio tape to send to my parents in New York. Dale and Ericka sang songs and talked. In the midst of the performance, Ericka ran out of the room.

Dale called out, "Ericka, where are you going?"

Erica whispered something in return, so Dale asked again, with the tape still recording, "Where are you going?"

Ericka peeked indignantly into the room and said, "I have to poo!"

OUR FRIEND JUDY'S DESSERT SUNDAY NIGHT AT SANDPIPER.
BLOCKING THE DESSERT FROM THE VIEW OF THE DIETING SAN GERALDO.
THE DEPRIVED AND POUTING SAN GERALDO.

Back to Poo[h]
Our dear friend Judyshannonstreetwhat (click here if you need an introduction) is here for another month on the Costa del Sol. Tuesday, we three were having coffee with the Goddess Elena (click here if you haven't met) and Elena said something about "poo." San Geraldo followed up using the word "shit."

Judy said, "Well, that's not the same thing!"

"What?" we all said.

"Shit and poo are not the same thing," stated Judy. "Shit is pee."

"No, it's not!" we all snorted.

"Yes, it is!" she insisted.

"Shit is poo!" we cackled.

"Well, not in Seattle!" Judy harumphed.

And then came (mostly from me): "Are you shittin' me? No shit, Sherlock! BULLshit! You don't know shit from shinola! Shit on a shingle. Shit on a stick. Shit on rye. Ew, that smells like shit. Bleh, this tastes like shit. Does a bear shit in the woods? Let's go get shit-faced..."

Midstream, Judy realised she had had a brain fart, we were all in tears of laughter, and I nearly popped my remaining five post-surgery staples (more on that Thursday).

Once we settled a little, Judy begged me to not tell her sister, Joan.

So of course I immediately emailed her.

Joan wrote back and explained that, because she herself has lived outside the city of Seattle most of her life, she has therefore always known shit and poo are the same thing.

I then emailed Tynan at work, who wrote back saying, "She must have been taking the piss."*


Thanks to Judy for chasing all the clouds from the sky.
*"Taking the piss" from British slang "taking the piss out of," which means to mock, tease, ridicule, or scoff.

20 comments:

  1. God, that is my kind of conversation.

    Case in point: in college I worked as a bartender along with a female bartender, and one night she was telling the story of her husband who worked at a lumber mill and a horrible accident in which a band saw came loose and flew at one of the husband's co-workers.

    "Did it decapitate him?" I asked.
    "Nope," she said. "Took his head right off."

    She thought decapitate was from the waist up.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Bob:
      Hmmm... That poor bartender was clearly suffering from more than a brain fart!

      Delete
  2. Word play abounds.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Andrew:
      We have so many conversations like this... in both English and Spanish.

      Delete
  3. LOL! Now that was a story and a half!!
    One question: Did Judy eat that dessert after all this talk?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Jim:
      Fortunately, the dessert was Sunday. The poo conversation didn't occur until Tuesday.

      Delete
  4. Oh my, Judy's dessert looks rather unfortunate in this context....

    Many years ago, when still in my early twenties, a slightly older friend was telling me all about her new love; a 'Grandy Home' just full of 'Saver Ferry'.... why he even told her 'Oh River' instead of goodbye, and gave her a book called 'Less Miserabluhs'.
    I struggled valiantly, nearly choked to death, holding in the laugh until I'd run for the bathroom, locked the door, and turned the shower on full-blast.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Jacqueline:
      Good thing the dessert came first. At least your slightly older friend didn't say Less Miserable(s). Still... moan do, moan do!

      Delete
  5. Thanks for the laugh! For a minute, I thought I had missed out on a colloquialism from my days in Seattle. :)

    What a SAD picture of San Geraldo! How did you get the picture to look like that? (Asked by a person who obviously doesn't know how to take pictures.)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Jo:
      That version of San Geraldo was produced using a feature in Adobe PhotoShop called "Cutout."

      Delete
  6. Words and their meanings.... My Mom didn't finish high school... but she read... voraciously. So she had a fantastic vocabulary... but her pronunciation was... well, it was the shits..... My Mom is long gone, but my brother, sister and I still purposely use some of her words when we're together.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sharon:
      Sometimes it's impossible to avoid those pronunciations... even when you try. Jerry's father, also extremely intelligent, had a couple of very funny words and we got so used to repeating them that way that now we don't always know they're incorrect.

      Delete
  7. Poor thing, you fully took advantage of the situation too. She'll get you back, just be wary.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Cheapchick:
      Oh, Judy was pretty embarrassed... and we haven't stopped picking on her. But we all DO get ours. Regularly. She's no shrinking violet.

      Delete
  8. I live close to Seattle and I can say for certain that even there, poo is shit.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Now wash your mouth out - and those typing hands.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Raybeard:
      I'm surprised I didn't get a lecture (or at least a "Mitchell!!!") from the Dowager Duchess.

      Delete
  10. Did the dessert really have to look kind of like poo? When I first saw the picture and the title of our blog today, I thought that's what it was!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Linda:
      Fortunately, the dessert came two days before the poo!

      Delete

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