Dad's Secret Language

When I was little Dad use to tell us lots of things that included words we didn't yet know. For example, Hilary and I would always go and play in the big ditch that was across the street from our house. For the longest time he would yell at us for doing that usually by sticking his head out the back door and yelling "Stay out of the culvert!" Hilary and I would always yell back "Ok!" and then go back to playing because we didn't know what that meant. This continued for years probably. It wasn't til later that we learned that the culvert was the concrete part of the ditch that is kind of like a drain. 

Another example was when I was playing softball when I was about 9 or 10. I was a pitcher and I would get a few really big hits off of me and Dad would say "Stop lobbing the ball!" I would again say "Ok!" Finally after he had been yelling that at me forever, I said "I don't know what that means!" Duh!

Even one more example is when Dad would have me help him make spaghetti. He would tell me to get the colander out to drain the noodles. However, I did not know what the heck he was talking about. Instead of explaining though, he usually bit our heads off because we didn't have this background knowledge.