L U N A T A L K with Eva Moon

It’s Like a Fish. But It’s Not a Fish.

June 20, 2008 on 2:19 pm | In General Musing |

You’re unique. Just like everybody else.

It’s meant as a joke, but there’s a great grain of truth in it. In the act of discovering the uniqueness of everybody else, you begin to accept your own as something usual rather than alarming. When my son was a young teen and sure everyone was normal except him, I assured him that anyone who seems normal is merely someone you don’t know well enough.

One of the pleasures of the old TV show, “America’s Funniest Home Videos” was that it gave you glimpses into the human truth that everyone is reassuringly abnormal in his own way. Just. Like. You.

Every family has its own culture, language and history. Incidents become stories become tropes - short-hand, traditional responses that tie us together and set us apart. Here are three from mine:

It’s a bread slicer!

A childhood vacation in some forgotten California town. We stopped at a bakery for snacks and my sisters and I stood rivited by the automatic bread slicing machine until we were forceably dragged away. In our experience bread CAME sliced. It had never crossed our minds even to wonder how it got that way. It became the sole topic of conversation in the car until mom exclaimed, “For Pete’s sake! It’s just a bread slicer!” Since then the call “it’s a bread slicer” is invoked whenever someone is getting carried away by unwarranted enthusiasm.

Honey, I refrigeratored the car

Sometime before my sister’s wedding, she and her fiance rented an apartment. They needed a refrigerator and she happened to be the one with time to shop. It was the first time she’d gone out on her own and made a major purchase with “their” money. She made such a big deal of this milestone that to this day, when one partner makes a large household purchase on the trust of the other, it’s been “refrigeratored.” I once refrigeratored a minivan. But that’s another story.

Is it a bus?

My neice, Katy, was maybe three years old. She and her friend Cody liked to play this game where one would draw a picture on an Etch-a-Sketch and the other would guess what it was. Katy wiggled the knobs and presented the resulting mess to Cody. After pondering a minute he said, “Can I have a hint?”

Katy nodded, “It’s like a fish, but it’s not a fish.”

Cody asked, “Is it a bus?”

“Yes!”

There must be lost secrets of childhood.

Ever since, the only satisfying response to any conversation-stopping, out-of-left-field non sequitur has been “Is it a bus?”

These are the kinds of small/large moments that give a family a shape. All together instead of one-by-one. I better stop before I make a bread slicer of it.

Now it’s your turn to share. How is your family unique?

See more like that one:

• Disappearing/Reappearing Airport
• Murder Most Foul
• Rolling Downhill
• Peach City Shakedown
• Small Miracles in the Air