Letter from Slim Wolfe
American life – November 2003 – Colorado Central Magazine
Editors,
Some time back, I wrote a few words about the sort of verbal currency found in these parts (and elsewhere, as well): People, not finding dollars and cents sufficient, are always trading “youcant’s” and “yougottas” in the endless struggle to get a leg up on other folks. I have since realized that my list was woefully incomplete.
Let’s consider the grampaduns. Probably Ukrainian in origin, the grampadun is long-established in western currency: “Grampadun swum his oxen crost the Atlantic so’s he could pull himself up by the bootstraps and become a pillar of this great state and that’s why yougotta buy this catfood from me.”
Well, maybe, but look out for the other sort: “Grampadun swum the Atlantic cause of persecution and that’s why yougotta pay me double.” Hard to find a family tree anywhere on the planet without a few persecuted grampaduns. Ho hum.
Then there’s the song-and-a-dance, evolved from medieval French coin: “When I asked for my car back she gave me a song-and-a-dance about how her sister-in-law had borrowed her computer and the dog had eaten all the marijuana. No comment.
Notice that coin with the hollow ring? That’s the GPM, God’s Personal Mouthpiece. Worthless and should have been out of circulation long ago, rough copies of coinage used by ancient Incas, Sumerians, and others. Ah so.
Then there’s the most common: lookeemees, including the lookeemystuff and lookeewhatImadema. No need to explain them.
Last but not least we’ve seen a resurgence of the merkun. “Buy from me cause I’m a red-blooded whang-bang merkun and my doodle-woodles come from a container ship in that great merkun port of San Diego. See my merkun flag made from Singapore plastic?”
Anyone notice that common cents are obsolete?
But if the song-and-dance had it’s prototype in France, and the merkun in Han Dynasty China, the grampadun in Russia, and youcan’ts and yougottas were first used in biblical Assyria, can anyone tell me how we got the one which says “the ****s never had an original idea in their heads but copied everything from the ****s?”
We suspect that one was minted by Grampadun himself when he looked at Grammadun and got this absolutely unique and original merkun song-and-dance that just couldn’t be beat — just like the melody for “My Country ‘Tis of Thee,” “God Save the Queen,” “Anacreon,” and that German/Austrian waltz tune, whaddya mean. Grampadun borrowed a tune that’s by golly original and no true-blue merkun would say otherwise.
Dr. J.T. Clearasmudd Wolfe
Villa Grove
