CRIMES AGAINST THE MOTHER TONGUE

Sideways Mystery Mittens.
I'm making futures pairs with a colored stripe
to break up the monotony.

I have to take someone for a colonoscopy today.  I'll spare him/her the embarrassment of mentioning his/her name, but suffice it to say I'm packing up plenty of knitting to keep me occupied.  The last couple Cubs games have been spent working on these Sideways Mystery Mittens from Elizabeth Zimmermann's The Opinionated Knitter for the charity project Mittens for Detroit.  Should be able to churn out another one while at the horse-pital.

Strange as it may sound, colonoscopies cannot be brought up in my family without us reminiscing about my late father.  I could make a joke about my Old Man and a pain in the ass, but that would be too obvious.  Actually, it has to do with a combination of his butchering of the English language and his tendency to tell the same story over and over.  A couple decades ago he went for his first colonoscopy and in his telling (and retelling and retelling) they said, "You have huge, huge, huge polyps in your colon."  (Always three huges and always with the same inflection.)  Except he didn't say "polyps."  He said "palettes."  Huge, huge, huge palettes in his colon.  Remember Archie Bunker and his frequent mispronunciations for comic effect?  Yeah, that was our Old Man.

Just for my own amusement I made up a list of his top ten abuses:

10. Huge, huge, huge palettes, obviously.

9.  He had a pain in his Achilles heel (pronounced uh-chill-ees).

8.  He went to his yearly appointment at the urine-ologist.

7.  He was having trouble with his rotator cup.

6.  He could barely walk because of this ache in his butt-locks.

5.  He just had his prostrate exam.  (He also liked to call it the "finger wave,"
     which he at least pronounced correctly.)

4.  When they first came out, he bought him one of them George Foster grills. 

3.  He often went to the terlet (and thus his frequent visits to the urine-ologist).

2.  He was annoyed by professional basketball player Shageel McNeal.

1.  During the 2008 election season we had many discussions about
     John McCann and his opponent, Barack O'bana.


Here's hoping today's patient is palette-free.  Happy Monday, everyone.