COLLEGE CHEESE

I'm at a University with a fairly large Aggie school, and they make cheese. How do you know you weren't right the first time and he adults were wrong?

Well, it's just such considerations which account for the patience and understanding shown by small children . . .

reminds me very little of the time I was home from Arabia and my mother and grandmother along with my cousin drove into the "city" and my cousin Karen and I where sent into the local market for "napkins" and we complied with the adult request and bought "sanitary napkins". they ( my mother and grandmother) had quite a guffaw. I was about 9.

Adults are weird, I agree. That's why I never grew up, nor intend to do so.

I was nearly three when my parents told me that I would get a sister.

My father was a doctor at a Catholic hopspital, run by nuns - so I knew already a lot about sisters!
And thus, I didn't accept my sister because she really didn't look remotely like one of those 'pinguins'.

(It was okay later, when I learnt that she was a 'normal' baby. Some weeks after her birth, she had to undergo an operation .... something with her navel. When she was brought back by an ambulance, plastered between the legs, I enthusiastically asked: "Is she now completed?"
It took a couple of more months until I learnt that all girls look around there differently to us.)

Our family is originally from Wisconsin but my folks moved to DC when WW2 started. I was born there, but every year or two we would go back to northern Wisconsin to my paternal grandparents' place. Lots of uncles and aunts and cousins and a few grand aunts and grand uncles.
So we were all there once in mid-summer when Mr Walters, who ran the dairy farm down the road came by. Heavy rain was in the forecast and he had twenty acres of hay all baled up but laying in the field. He needed help getting it into the barn.
So off went the men-folk and the cousins and 7-year old johnboy. And they pitched the bales onto the hay wagon behind the tractor being driven by Alex Walters, the 16-year old son. I really admired Alex, even though he once talked me into pissing on an electric fence.
Anyway, we were heading up the hill, with room enough for the last few bales and the top of the barn in sight.
Johnboy shouted out, loud enough to be heard by everyone, "Alex, can I drive the tractor when it breaks down?"
"Uh, sure, kid."
Fifteen seconds later, the engine of the tractor made a very loud popping noise and went silent. The crowd of men all went silent. Everyone was looking at johnboy. Johnboy simply exclaimed, "I get to drive the tractor now!"
I was told years later that some of the Catholics crossed themselves. I don't know what the Lutherans did.

Of course when we said the "I pledgalesion"
it was
"I pledge a lesion to the flag
a the UnineeStays of America
.....
One nation in a Dirigible...

I still like my early pledga lesion

"pledge a leision" is good, farmer. And wasn't there something about "one nation in a windowsill"?

Deck us all
By Walt Kelly

Deck us all with Boston Charlie,
Walla Walla, Wash., an' Kalamazoo!
Nora's freezin' on the trolley,
Swaller dollar cauliflower alley-garoo!

Don't we know archaic barrel
Lullaby Lilla Boy, Louisville Lou?
Trolley Molly don't love Harold,
Boola boola Pensacoola hullabaloo!

Bark us all bow-wows of folly,
Polly wolly cracker 'n' too-da-loo!
Donkey Bonny brays a carol,
Antelope Cantaloupe, 'lope with you!

Hunky Dory's pop is lolly gaggin' on the wagon,
Willy, folly go through!
Chollie's collie barks at Barrow,
Harum scarum five alarm bung-a-loo!

Dunk us all in bowls of barley,
Hinky dinky dink an' polly voo!
Chilly Filly's name is Chollie,
Chollie Filly's jolly chilly view halloo!

Bark us all bow-wows of folly,
Double-bubble, toyland trouble! Woof, woof, woof!
Tizzy seas on melon collie!
Dibble-dabble, scribble-scrabble! Goof, goof, goof!

http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_188.html

a fast talking waitress, helped me determine what i wanted as a youngster i wanted super juice, hell i wanted it now, i was very disappointed to discover i was not getting super juice, in fact the option to have "soup or juice" wasn't even included with my meal

I was about five or so--and attending my first golf tournament. Everything was suspect. Men wore crazy pants, and every fifteen minutes or so, everyone was perfectly silent. I hadn't been told why.

Once again, my mother shushed me, and I whispered, "Why do we have to be quiet?"

She proudly pointed in the direction of a rather large group of people, over whose heads, I could see my own daddy's head, oddly looking down--and by the positioning of his shoulders and what I could see of his arms, it seemed he had a serious grasp of some object, frankly, near his whatsit.

When she said, "Daddy's teeing off," I incredulously exclaimed, "In front of all those people?!!"

From what I'd seen, she couldn't convince me this wasn't a sport involving watching men pee.

when i started school in hamburg/germany, i had to take the ferry from the harbour - where we lived - across the elbe river to get into the city. hamburg being a port city, had many "bilingual" - german and english - signs in and around the harbour. a sign posted in the ferry cabin stated
" no smoking " . in german a "smoking" is what we call a tuxedo in canada . i had not started english classes yet and could not understand why anyone wearing a "smoking" would not be allowed to sit in the cabin. it wasn't until grade four that english classes started and i understood it would be o.k. to wear a "smoking" in the cabin. btw not many of the longshoremen using the ferry were wearing a "smoking" - but they puffed away on their cigs and pipes. hbg

In China, everytime I went, I was ordered to bring bolts of silk (6momi) to my wife. I became passably fluent in the Southern dialects and learned the rudements of the language enough so I wouldnt have to commit sepukku.
The word for silk is like a wet zshzsh? (question mark is there so that the "uptalk" was strongly emphasized)
There is another word that sounds similar , like ZSZSHH!. which means "little boy".
Many times , in the silk markets I would start to haggle with a "DO ZHAQUON ZSHZSH . I was always followed up with looks of surprise followed by laughter when I was told that I was asking how much are little boys?

So, it still happens , but not as much anymore. I have my colleague do the buying. I just peel off the NT's

Cool stories... One last one from johnboy:
My parents bought a house on Carolina Place in Alexandria VA, a suburb of DC. (As an aside, they bought it from a member of the US House of Representatives who had been defeated in his re-election bid. The guy who beat him was named Richard Nixon). The house came with a spare lot next door. My grandparents came to stay with us for the fall and winter of 1952 or thereabouts. My father and his father set about building these elaborate walkways and patios and low brick walls and lots of landscaping. They, as I look back now, were never real close until they began that project.
I didn't understand why they were doing it. But my parents seemed to have a lot of parties, picnics, gatherings. And there would be a lot of military people there, in dress uniform, with lots of brass on them. It was only much later that I learned that these folks were all working on something called "a computer." Not the first computer, but a computer that would change the world.

Anyway, Grampa needed large flat stones to build the walkway. So every weekend or two we would drive the station wagon up into the mountains of rural Virginia and gather them from where they had slid down the hills.
One day, a very hot day, my dad and grand-dad and my brother and I were about to set off. I blurted out, "Don't forget the hot-pads." They stared at me blankly.
We got to the site. We tried to pick up the rocks. But they were too hot to pick up. My dad and grand-dad had to take off their shoes and use their socks as hot-pads.

when we moved to canada, our first apartment was "just on the other side of the tracks" - but close enough to walk to the right side of the tracks. our kitchen window looked out on a little backyard with a rather ramshackle little house. i came home one day and was told by mrs h that a general and his wife had moved into that palatial abode ???
what made you think he was a general, i asked . well. he was wearing a blue uniform with red stripes on his trousers, epaulettes and a cap with gold and red decorations ! must be a general, right ?
turned out he was the doorman at the local movie-theatre ! even more than forty years later we get a good laugh about "having a general living in the backyard" ! hbg

johnboy's stories aren't just cute-lil-kid-mixes-up-words stories! Were you psychic, johnboy?!

My son was about three when he first saw Star Wars on TV. I was working late, and came in halfway through.
He ran over excitedly and told me all about it, just as the sinister music started up and the familiar baddie swooped past in his black helmet and cape.

"Look, Daddy....there's the baddie.....he's called Bath Spider!"

I suspect that to a three-year-old, a spider in the bath could well stand for an incarnation of evil . . .

Until I was probably 10 I didn't know the words at church to some of our prayers. During mass we'd sing "Grandmas Peas" (Grant us peace) and so of course during christmas it was Santa's Peas.

Also, being a little know it all, when I was probably 6 or 7, the adults were standing around talking about something and someone mentioned Timbucktoo. I butted my way into the group and said "Yeah, isn't that in Tennessee somewhere?"