Monday, May 11, 2009

Oh, Nora . . .

In honor of Mother's Day, I thought I'd blog about my lovely mom. After all, no one in my life has given me more fodder than Nora . . .

My mom is a words person. Everyone who knows her knows that. She's an avid reader and if she runs across a new word in a book, she looks it up and will remember it FOREVER. It's really pretty remarkable. It's rather ironic, then, that she is TERRIBLE about remembering the names of things and it's always fun to try to translate her Nora-ism to plain language. I remember one night I picked her up to take her to dinner because she really had a taste for steak. As I was backing out of her driveway, I asked where she would like to go. She was very excited, clapped her hands down onto her knees, and declared with a big smile: "Starburst!" As there is no restaurant named "Starburst," this was not helpful information. So I put the car in park at the end of her street and started naming off restaurants until I had translated Starburst into Saltgrass Steakhouse. She tried to defend herself by saying that their logo looks like a starburst. Their logo is a cow skull . . .

Other notable Nora-isms include:
Martinique = Macaroni Grille
Killing Sergeant Somebody = Saving Private Ryan
Roadrunners = Roadside Sliders at Cheesecake Factory
Happy acres = Jolly Ranchers

Names are not her forte, I guess. :) But words certainly are. I remember when we were kids, we had to use a new vocabulary word everyday. She has made us all lovers of words and good grammar and I'm thankful for that. Even after we had grown up, she would teach us by using a strange word in a sentence. We'd ask her what it means and then she'd do the whole "Oh, you know what that means" thing and then she'd tell us. I remember one night, we were home from college and we had a bunch of friends over. We were all sitting around and my mom described someone's laugh as a "titter." My friends (mostly guys that night) got a kick out of that word because they had never heard it. She said "You've heard that word. It's just a laugh." And then the words we'll never forget: "Catherine, show 'em your titter." My friends got wide-eyed, most likely thinking I had the coolest mom, and then Erin quickly exclaimed "Oh God, Catherine - please don't." I don't know if any of us had ever laughed that hard. And, thankfully, my titter remained, ummmm, undisclosed . . .

I'm thankful to have a GREAT mom who has passed on her love for words to me AND who unwittingly gives me such great material.

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY, MOM!!!

6 comments:

Emma said...

Another good one, Catch. The "isms" could go on forever, but the words and grammar would be even longer....thanks, Mom!

Alana said...

oooh nora! gotta love that woman!

Unknown said...

Oh, I will never forget Killing Sargent Somebody. One of my all time favorites!

Starshine said...

That story made me titter out loud! (TOL)! :)

Phyllis Eddings said...

someday Sarah is going to post something like this about me. I'm not nearly as bad as your mom, but I think it's getting worse with age.....

Phyllis Eddings said...

And I must add, that I posted my previous comment before I finished reading the entire thing. Show them your titter? OMGosh, I am ROTFLMAO