Personal vocabulary

Looking at the tile in my bathtub today and the watermarks there, I said out loud, "I have to get some Bab-O and really scrub that soon."

It stopped me cold. Bab-O.  A product not made since the 1950s or so, but one that my father and mother referred to often when it came to cleaning.  And now it's part of my lexicon, and it brings the two of them back to me immediately. 

Just like when I say, "T'ain't funny, McGee," when someone makes a dumb comment or mocks me. A one-liner from Fibber McGee and Molly, a radio show that I wasn't even alive to hear, but an active part of my memory.  Dad used this phrase to keep me in line if I was lipping off.  And now, when I say it, only Nick knows what I'm talking about because he listens to old radio shows in the shop.

Mom had her phrases too.  I was always her bubala.  She's not Jewish, but having grown up in the Bronx in the 1940s, she picked up her fair share of Yiddish.  Guessing I was one of the only kids in McLean in the 1970s being called that.  Or her favorite phrase when coddling/teasing...ism-wism-mosum-moosum.  Probably another variant of something Yiddish.  I doubt she even remembers where she got that one, but it sounds like an oldie.

Growing up, I used tin foil.  We watched moving pictures.  And Mom and Dad fought over using oleo or butter.  All phrases that no longer make sense in a post-industrial, Internet world.  But still, they are lodged firmly - and used often - in my own personal vocabulary and they make me feel instantly close to the people who shared them with me.