Back when I was a little guy, my siblings and I hit on the idea of trying to change our language. To be honest, it was more them than me, but I was happy to join in.\u00a0The idea was to start using the word “adequate” when something was amazingly good.<\/p>\n
At the time, people were saying things like “awesome” for every little thing (“Ice cream? Awesome!”) and\u00a0we wanted to fight back by establishing “adequate” as being better than awesome.<\/p>\n
We tried for a while and then the idea faded. Years later, however, that usage\u00a0of “adequate” started showing up in movies like Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure.<\/p>\n
My eyes were opened. Did we really change the language? Probably not. But maybe… Ever since then, I’ve been trying to introduce more changes.<\/p>\n
My most blatant attempt is the answer to the question “how are you?”<\/p>\n
It started when a friend asked me how I was. Things were going astonishingly badly at the time, but I really didn’t want to talk about it, so I said “Marvy.” My friend took the hint.<\/p>\n
Having stumbled on such a great success, I decided to try to stretch it into “Marvy, Marvy.” It had a weird Austin Powers feel to it, and could be delivered with either a laugh or an eye-roll. People reacted well to it, usually with a laugh or a smile.<\/p>\n
In the middle of that,\u00a0my sister-in-law (Hi Yanna!) called. At the time, whenever you asked Yanna how she was, she’d give an Eeyore answer, something like “oh well, you know” or a depressed\u00a0“I’m okay.” So, to compensate I added “Bang-Bang” to the end of my “Marvy Marvy.”<\/p>\n
“Marvy, Marvy, Bang-Bang.” It’s the ultimate answer to the question of how you are doing. Depending on your delivery, it can mean anything from “great” to “terrible.” Or at least, that’s what I thought.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, no one else seemed to agree with me.<\/p>\n
No one, that is, except for my oldest. He loved it, especially when we added “whoop whoop whoop” to the end of it, turning it in to “Marvy Marvy Bang-Bang, whoop whoop whoop.” I don’t use that extended version too often, though. It’s just a little too far over the top.<\/p>\n
He’s in Texas right now,\u00a0visiting relatives with the rest of the family. I called my wife yesterday\u00a0to check in, and she handed the phone around.<\/p>\n
“How ya doing, big guy?” I asked my oldest when he took the phone.<\/p>\n
“Marvy Marvy Bang-bang, Rakawatchalooloo!”<\/p>\n
Heh. That’s my boy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
So… How are you doing today? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[123,118,119],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daddytales-cute","category-daddytales-c","category-daddytales-funny"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6DpYi-kC","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1278\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}