Honesty and the Great Hoo-Ha Mystery

My middle sister has boy/girl twins that were born in January 2004. She and her family lived in the same city as me when the her children were born, but they moved back to Wisconsin when the twins were almost a year old. I miss them like crazy. I only get to see them once a year, so Middle Sister tries very hard to keep in touch by email, phone and video. Recently she called to share a funny story with me, that had me absolutely howling and illustrated quite clearly that I am a very small person.

To preface this story, you have to know that my youngest sister has a boyfriend that is not very popular with our family. He is lazy and self-involved and suffers from manic depression. He refuses to seek treatment or take medication, which would not make him any more likeable, but would enable him to live a somewhat normal and productive life. Poor, pitiful, disabled person that he is, he has taken shameless advantage of everyone in our family, and most of us learned long ago not to fall into that trap. But Youngest Sister still hasn't realized that she is his meal ticket.

The longer they are together, the more inextricably she falls under his spell. His illness causes paranoia and though she is not mentally ill, she buys into his half assed theories, which causes all kinds of drama, and often, tension between the two of them and the rest of our family. He particularly dislikes me, and this has driven a wedge between Youngest Sister and me. I have tried several times to repair the damage to our relationship, but it inevitably comes down to a choice between me or him. Guess who wins? At thirty, she is still young enough to start over and have all the things she has given up to be with him, namely, children. But they have been together for over ten years, and we are losing hope that she will ever realize that he is a huge stone around her neck. She loves him. SIGH.

So there's some dirty laundry aired out for all the internet to see.

Anyway...the twins are in the midst of a language explosion and as twins often do, they have developed some words that only the two of them seem to know the meaning of. Middle Sister has managed to decode some of these words, and it has been very interesting to see how they classify things in their world and name them accordingly.

For instance, Girl Twin calls Boy Twin not by his name, but by "Eye-eye". After she had been using it for a while, Boy Twin started calling himself "Eye-Eye". He knows his name, he responds to his name, but clearly thinks of himself as "Eye-Eye". Interestingly, Girl Twin is simply Girl Twin to both of them. Finally Middle Sister realized that although they are not identical, they don't seem to be able to distinguish themselves when shown a photograph. When asked, they will simply say, "Eye", regardless of which twin is being pointed to. This led to the conclusion that perhaps "Eye-Eye" was a way of saying "another me". I am me, and so is he. "I-I." Peculiar, but apparently pretty common with twins, even fraternals. And pretty smart, I thought. Also, they use the word "obido" to identify people or things they do not know the name of. Middle sister surmises that this is the twinspeak adaptation of "Idontknow."

There are still quite a few words and phrases that remain a mystery though, one of which is their word for Youngest Sister's boyfriend. They call him Hoo-Ha. They know the names of most of the family and call everybody by their names, including me, my husband and my boys, even though we only see them once a year or so. They can correctly identify us when shown our pictures, and they address us by name on the phone. So, it seemed a little strange that they couldn't seem to learn Youngest Sister's boyfriend's name.

Finally, through a random series of events, Middle Sister had an epiphany whereby she realized that Hoo-Ha is twinspeak for.....MONKEY!! Because monkeys say....hoo-hoo-hoo, ha-ha-ha. Try it. And yes, Youngest Sister's boyfriend does have a very Simian looking face. He is also very short, and hairy, and his arms are unusually long. Knuckle walking wouldn't present much of a challenge for him.

I laughed so hard I almost wet myself. Tears were running down my face, and I could scarcely catch my breath. Oh my. Leave it to a toddler to call a spade a spade. See, I told you. Very small person.

In my defense, he ruined my first Thanksgiving home in 18 years by suggesting that I sent him out for a corkscrew (yes, we are awash with corkscrew issues in this family) to covertly exclude him from Thanksgiving dinner. First Thanksgiving at home. In 18 years. We cooked for three days. My mother set the table with her best china and an antique linen tablecloth. It was beautiful. And he cast a pall over everything by throwing a big fat tantrum and then refusing to eat with us anyway. The real bitch of it was that I thought I was doing him a favor by giving him an opportunity to get away from the chaos and the commotion, which due to his illness make him extremely nervous, for a few moments. I thought I was being NICE. Am I bitter? Hell yes.

The entire family including Youngest Sister and Youngest Sister's boyfriend has been involved in solving the Great Hoo-Ha mystery, and so now Middle Sister is faced with finding a way to tactfully tell Youngest Sister's boyfriend that her children are calling him Monkey Man.

How much bad Karma do you think I would bring upon myself if I volunteered for the job? Just asking.