So, I sat down to read to my son last night. And in getting comfortable in a low chair, I start to make the old man noises. “Er… Umph… Mggg…” etc. But, for whatever reason, I ended with a hearty, “Choocachoomunga.”
“What’s ‘choocachoomunga’ mean, Dad?” he reasonably asked.
Not wanting to go with the truth (it means nothing, and was a set of meaningless syllables I popped out as part of my descent), I thought for a moment, and went with:
“Choocachoomunga… is the noise people make when they say, ‘Choocachoomunga.’”
He was greatly amused. I admit, I amused myself a bit on that one. He immediately said, “That would work with any word you don’t know. Ask me what something I don’t know means!”
So I asked, “What is ‘Barsoom?”
“Barsoom,” he replied, “is the noise people make when they say, ‘Barsoom.’”
He catches on fast.
Ahh…the joys of recursive definition. Awesome.