Last time, I invited you to share your family code words with me. Don Weber, of Lenox, shot back: “I would sooner give you the answers to my security questions than reveal our code words!”
Good grief, Don! What kinds of words are those? Many people use code just to outwit their pets.
Shannon Larkin, of Cambridge, explained: “In a house with two active dogs, you cannot say ‘walk the dog’ without causing immediate chaos. So we switch to things dogs are less likely to glom on to, like perambulate the pup. ‘Hey, I’m home! Do the pups need perambulating?’”
Stephen Mulloney, of West Roxbury, wrote: “Over the years we have had a number of papillons as pets — adorable, super-intelligent, energetic dogs. To temper their enthusiasm when any pap-involved activity is discussed, my wife and I started referring to them as certain individuals, as in, ‘Is it time for certain individuals to take their evening meal?’ They have cracked all the codes for walks, car trips, etc., and they can spell T-R-E-A-T-S. But one phrase they have never been able to get is certain individuals, and so that has become the established code in our house for the dogs.”
Of course, humans use code for non-dog-related purposes too.
Mary Miller, of Juneau, Alaska, told me: “Most of my siblings are very conservative, while my nieces and nephews and I are very liberal. A few years ago, we held a family reunion in Wisconsin. The liberal side of the family came up with the code phrase ‘Have you seen any sandhill cranes?’ as a way to change the subject or get someone out of trouble. It worked very well — and it was amazing how so many people were interested in sandhill cranes.”
Laura B. Roberts, of Cambridge, wrote: “When my brother wanted to change the topic of conversation, he’d say, ‘I hear the World Series starts tomorrow’” — which no doubt struck people as strange on about 364 days of the year.
Susan Tornheim, of Newton Highlands, reported: “In our family, groundhog signifies that the person it’s directed to has food on their face.”
Joe Peters told me: “My wife Jan and I use the phrase ‘So what do you think?’ It works for leaving the party, or if we’re at home — well, I’ll leave that to your imagination!”
And John Pacheco, of Gardner and Washington, D.C., reported: “My 14-year-old son, John, went to Panama alone to stay with the family of a friend from college. We knew we would be worried about his safety, so if he were in danger, his code on a telephone call with us was to be ‘They don’t serve quahogs here.’”
I like that! Not only does quahogs introduce a local angle, but the sentence strikes me as all-purpose: It could serve the rest of us as code for almost anything. I’m awarding John bragging rights this time — and I’m adding ”They don’t serve quahogs here” to my lexicon as soon as I can think of my own use for it. Thank you, John!
On to the next challenge. This time, I found myself thinking ahead to St. Patrick’s Day, which got me thinking about limericks. The limerick, the Irish Times states confidently, is “the most popular poem in the world’s most important language, English.”
The paper is less confident about how, why, and when the limerick got its name. It may have derived from the activities of the Irish Brigade in 18th-century France; from the 18th-century Maigue Poets in County Limerick, Ireland; or from the chorus “Will you come up to Limerick?” which, the Oxford English Dictionary reports, was once sung between improvised verses at “convivial parties.”
In any case, the poetic form itself long predates the name. It even turns up in “Othello,” by Shakespeare. Who was, of course, not Irish.
So while a limerick whose beginning I wrote for you is set in Scotland (like “Macbeth”!), please don’t think this location inapposite. I wanted to give you something easy to work with, and an awful lot of rhyming words end in -oon.
My unfinished limerick goes like this:
They stumbled upon Brigadoon
On a beautiful spring afternoon.
Please write the final three lines and send them to me by noon on Friday, March 17, at Barbara.Wallraff@globe.com, and kindly include where you live.
Barbara Wallraff is a writer and editor who lives in Cambridge.