Bee-DAY-dus

The boys have their own language. They enjoy making up and using nonsense, or apparent nonsense words. I guess it’s possible that they have meaning to them, but I doubt it. They think they are hilarious to use and they usually use them when we’re asking something that we truly would like to know the answer to. The predecessor to this behavior is when they used to say to each other with enthusiasm, “Yucky diapers go outside!” over and over in public, like there was some hidden meaning in the phrase. It was kind of embarrassing. They don’t do that anymore. They’ve moved on to more frustrating “words.”

New example number one: Bee-DAY-dus. They say this word as they make some weird hand gesture that looks vaguely like gang signs, done with both hands at once. I do not know where it came from, but I wish it would go back to wherever it was. The context is typically something along the lines of we’re leaving someone’s house and we ask them to say goodbye to the friends, we ask them if they finished their dinner, where they hid the remote control, etc. They answer with Beedaydus and laugh. This weekend we went to a children’s consignment store by our house in search of some pants. We ended up walking out with Cal clutching some firefighter rain boots, Clark leaving his cup on the pretend school bus, and no pants. While we were there Clark was playing with an older boy, probably 6 years old or so, at the pretend grocery store. The boy told his mom, 

“Hey Mom, I’m playing with this little boy!” 

His mom came over, browsing the clothes, and asked, 

“What’s his name?” 

The boy asked. Clark looked at him, dropped the fake apple, and said, flashing his double-handed gang signs, 

“Bee-DAY-dus.” 

The mom frowned and said quizzically, 

“David?” 

Clark shouted and grinned mischievously, 

“No!” 

Then he enunciated it even more and the mom repeated him exactly, visibly stumped. 

“Bee-DAY-dus?” 

That’s where I had to jump in and explain his weirdness. I'm glad I overheard or the boy and his mom would probably have called him Beedaydus until we left. Then Cal walked over and I saved her some time by introducing him with his real name.

Here Clark says Bee-DAY-dus when asked to say cheese

Second and newest term: “DEW-dis NEWdis.”  This serves the same purpose as Beedaydus. A word to drive us crazy when we want real answers to our questions. Fortunately there are no stories of them saying this in public…yet. Stay tuned, for I am sure it will come out soon. And I'm sure it will involve someone thinking my boys are talking about nudists. 

Third word: Toe-MAY-toe. Clearly they did not make up the word tomato, but they stripped any meaning from the term by saying it in the same context—to annoy us and entertain each other— as with the other words. This one comes from a home video that we have from a couple months ago. Clark said “Toe-MAY-toe” and flashed his gang-ish signs, then inexplicably collapsing on the floor. There are no bigger fans of Cal and Clark than Cal and Clark, and they love to watch the video clip, and any video clip really, of themselves. So now they quote themselves like normal people would quote a classic movie. A tad on the narcissistic side but we tell ourselves they’ll grow out of it and instead develop healthy self-confidence that will propel them forward in life. Here’s hoping.

Public adventure with Toemaytoe: Yesterday we went to the driving range for Clark and Brian to hit golf balls and Cal and I to chase after each other and dodge swinging golf clubs and play in the gravel. Okay, mostly for me to chase him, keep him out of the gravel, and loudly encourage him to dodge the swinging clubs while sweating profusely. On one such dash behind the golfers, Cal stopped to talk to an older man and his wife who were fawning over him. The man had obviously been out in the sun for awhile and was quite red in the face. He smiled and said hi to Cal. Cal responded, flashing the gang signs to the man with the red face, and saying, clear as a bell, 

Hey Clark, are you poopy? Toe-MAY-toe

“Toe-MAY-toe.”

 Ug. The woman chuckled and said to her husband, 

“Well, you ARE pretty red from hitting golf balls.” 

I don’t think the man was appreciative and the woman seemed a little thrown off by Cal’s frankness. I’m sure there was no connection in Cal’s mind to the hue of the man’s face and a tomato, but it was agonizingly ironic and I didn’t even bother to explain, rather I kept a safe distance pretending not to hear, and tried to change the subject with Cal.

I wonder if most kids do this with language, or if it is specifically common among twins to create words.  I do remember making up words with my brother, so perhaps it is simply something that creative, linguistically-advanced children do. J I’ll keep that in mind when DEW-dis NEW-diss makes its debut in public.