Personal Lexicon

"You're an Onarga."

"You're an Onarga Oneida."

"At least I'm not a Pupusa head."

On our relocation drive down to Dallas from Chicago, Nate and I noticed unusual names. Onarga, Oneida, and Pupusa were all cities, exits, or restaurants we saw along the way through Illinois, Kentucky, Arkansas, or Texas. Those words are now part of our permanent vocabulary, especially when we're calling each other names.

We also have a couple of stories we picked up on our travels. Back in November 2001, Nate took a flight to Austin to help me drive a U-haul for my move to Chicago (he had moved to Illinois six months before I did). Near Rolla, Missouri, we had a fuel stop. We both went into the station/store to get drinks and pay for the gas. There was a fairly long line, and the woman at the front was exasperated with her husband, who was still picking something out.

"Hurry up," she said. "There are all these people waiting on you."

"Woman, I'm checking the damn expiration dates on the Dr. Pepper."

Needless to say, we started giggling. We were a little giddy. We had been driving for hours, the guy made his pronoucement in a great Southern drawl, and we didn't even know Dr. Pepper had expiration dates. The rest of the trip, whenever I made a request, Nate would turn to me and say, "Woman," in that same tone of self-righteous exasperation. He still says it from time to time.

On our recent return drive to Texas, we were just outside of Little Rock, Arkansas, when we stopped at a McDonald's. We were hoping to order breakfast. They stopped serving breakfast at 10. It was 10:02. We stared at the menu, trying to pick the most innocuous food, neither of us wanting anything fried so early in the morning. There was a crew of giggly teenagers working behind the counter. We walked up to one of them.

"I'd like to order--" I started.

"My ankle just popped," the guy behind the counter interrupted.

Nate and I looked at each other. I didn't know how to respond.

"Are you OK?" Nate asked.

"Yeah. I'm OK. My ankle just popped."

We ordered our food and went on our merry way.

Are these incidents and words actually funny? Or is it just the circumstances we found them in--tired, bored, and suffering cabin fever after a cross-country drive? I'm not sure. But what that teenager didn't know was that "my ankle just popped" entered our lexicon forever.