Oh Padiddle!

I'm sure there must be hundreds of variations of the game when two or more young people are in a car at night and they see an oncoming vehicle with one of the head lights out.  I've had my arm pounded by a younger sister who would yell "slug bug" (also works if you spot a Volkswagen Beetle at any time of day), had a girl friend who for some unknown reason would call them "turtles", and found out when dating Jackie that the proper term was "padiddle".

Padiddle can also be used as an exclamation when something goes amiss, as in "Oh Padiddle!  I'm not sure where this comes from but it must have some real life origin.  Since a lot of exclamations have to do with body functions perhaps it can be connected to what a puppy does when it gets over-excited.  "Oh padiddle, we have a little mess on our hands."

There seems to be both a choice of words and a progression of size involved in body functions that enables a person to  magnify their displeasure over something.  Jackie's family did not allow any type of swearing and even saying "fart" could get one sent to their rooms.  You can see how far society as a whole has come when I can blog "fart" and not be worried (and yes I am ashamed to sink so low as to try to get laughs from that word).

I grew up in a different type of family.  My mother and father also did not allow any type of swearing from their children but that did not seem to apply to my dad who would often say "excuse my English" after an outburst of profanity.  He grew up in a big city, lived through a tough war, and could get mad in an instant.  After saying what he had to say he would be fine - wasn't upset, never held a grudge.

Once when I was young my father and his brother Jack bought a sailboat together.  This was a case of two admirals with no crew on the same small boat gliding across a pleasant little lake in the conservative town of Holland.  I'm told that noise carries very well over the lake and that they turned the water blue.

Now back to the progression of displeasure.  Padiddle is far to one end because no one is certain what it means.  Everybody knows what the word "poop" means but we usually associate that with children who might say, "Mommy, I need to go poopy". Then would come fart and of course the jokes that surround the process.  Eddie Murry made a career with it.  Next would come the word "crap" which somehow isn't too offensive or funny but is widely used.  A parent might say to their innocent child, "clean that crap out of your bedroom" and we translate it as "mess" or maybe "junk".  "Oh crap!" is a little dicey because that does imply a body function and that phrase was banned for both Jackie and Me. 


Next of course is the four letter word "s**t".  An ugly word if there ever was one.  Why it is so much worse than "crap" baffles me.  What is interesting is that one can raise the ire level by adding animal names to the word.  "Horse s**t" indicates so much more displeasure than almost anything.  If I were to exclaim "dog poop" when getting mad people would laugh, but "horse s**t would make a guy want to punch me in the nose.  Why horse is superior to dog I can guess, but to elephant?  Beats me.

Which reminds me of a story my dad once told me.  He was a very successful salesman for many years, as was his father and my uncle Jack.  Thus my dad had a lot of stories about salesmen.

There was a guy named Joe who every month was on the very bottom of the sales list.  Finally the sales manager calls him into his office and tells him that if he doesn't quickly improve he will be looking for another line of work.  At the end of the next month the sales manger checks the totals and lo and behold Joe is at the very top of the charts.  He takes Joe out to lunch to congratulate him and asks him about his last sales call which resulted in a very big order.  "Tell me what you did different?"  Joe answers that his secret all has to do with one little phrase - "THAT'S FANTASTIC!".

 "The buyer shows me a picture of his daughter and tells me she was homecoming queen, has a 4.0 and works 20 hours each week with crippled kids on her own time.  I tell him THAT'S FANTASTIC!  Then he shows me a golfing plaque and indicates that he is club champ 6 years running and he just got his third hole-in-one.  Again I say THAT'S FANTASTIC!  Finally he tells me that his company is going to expand and that he will be the new branch operating manager.  WOW, THAT'S FANTASTIC! I shout".  The buyer then gets out his books and we write up a lot of business".

The sales manger asks, "so what did you do different?"  Joe replies, "In the past when they would feed me that crap I used to say - THAT'S BULL S**T!

Oh padiddle, please excuse my English.