Making "Fooley:" A Lesson In "Family Language"

All families have their own vernacular. These little idioms find their way into our speech through “language short-cuts” (like when my mom kept mispronouncing “Einstein Bagels” and called in “Eisensteins” and that progressed into our 3rd cat’s name…Little Steins), it is basic language evolution. Another way we discover the little words and phrases (and sometimes sounds or noises that aren’t even part of a known language at all!) is through communicating with our spouse or children. I have a dear friend who makes a “shh-shh” sound every time she kisses her son. To the two of them, it means, “I love you and everything is OK.” It is a fantastic, personal way to reassure him at night or when she drops him off at day care. My daughter and I (I can’t believe I’m admitting this!) have a special noise that we make, which is followed by (of all things…) a head butt. To us, it means, “I love you and we are the only ones who know our secret way of saying it to each other” (which is why I didn’t include the specifics!)
In our family, one of my favorite “family slang” words is…FOOLEY.
In the world of language, “fooley” is a jack-of-all-trades. Fooley can be a verb: “Hey Kids! Stop making fooley!” Fooley can be an adjective: “John was bad at school today, he’s such a fooley-maker!” Fooley can be an expletive: “Ah, FOOLEY!” For all practical purposes, fooley means, “trouble” or “mischief” or just a general ruckus, except as an expletive, then it means, well, it just means fooley!
As with any dictionary worth its salt, there is an evolution and explanation behind fooley. Being the hip, trendy, saucy Mommy that I am, I drive a Honda Odyssey minivan…TOTALLY tricked out. One of my favorite “tricks” is the DVD player. We swore up and down that we were NOT going to be the kind of parents whose childrens’ eyes are glued to an in-car DVD screen for every second of every car ride. Well, you know what they say about the best made plans…So, glued to the DVD player my childrens’ eyes are. Oh Fooley. They watch any number of DVD’s in the car…Milo and Otis (a classic), Monster’s Inc. (one of their favorites…and ours too!), and one that is really super annoying…in fact, it’s so annoying, I can’t recall the title off the top of my head, but it is something about Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and it has REALLY bad CG graphics. Well, they aren’t bad in the sense that they suck, they are bad in the sense that they aren’t the classic Disney hand drawn animation that I grew up on AND they aren’t Pixar. They’re, like, from some middle aged software guy’s basement studio and he works on it while his mother folds his laundry. Plus, (please hold the hate mail until the end) most people know I’m not a huge Disney park fan, and I was kinda hoping my kids would never figure out who Mickey and Minnie were, saving me the grief of a trip to the themepark…(shudder.) So in this episode Donald (always my fav of the group) has the hiccups and keeps saying, “Oh FOOEY!” but since he has that lovely speech impediment going on, my kids think he is saying, “OH FOOLEY” and then they LAUGH AND LAUGH AND LAUGH.
Suddenly the word “fooley” was finding itself wedged into our everyday language more and more, until it has become a family staple. I knew it was a keeper when I was legitimately yelling at the kids, “If I catch you kids making fooley ONE MORE TIME…!” I was like, “Wait a minute…did I just threaten them for fooley-making?” And when I drop the kids off at preschool I remind them to “not make fooley for their teachers.” “Fooley” may not be the next “dude” or “radical,” but don’t think it’s FOOLEY if you start saying it, too!