You know how sometimes you can go through life not noticing that something is totally hilarious?
It never occurred to me that the Japanese word for "mouth" is hilarious to Americans. Today, I was teaching my Upward Bound students parts of the body, and when we got to mouth, they just lost it. The word is kuchi. Yep, it's pronounced like that. I just looked at the chalkboard and thought "Oh yeah, that's a lot like cootchie." Or however that word is spelled.
Then I really did something awkward. I said "Well, you shouldn't have any trouble remembering that one then" meaning that the absurdity of the mouth/cootchie connection plus the sheer cognitive weight of the word "cootchie" should cement it in their memories. But they were all like "Uh, what's that supposed to mean?!" At that point, I realized I had no way of recovering, and probably switched into some awkward form of damage control.
They also really got a kick out of the word ashi which isn't actually pronounced like "ashy" but they kept saying it like that and laughing anyway. I don't fully get the "ashy" thing, maybe I should look it up on Urban Dictionary or something.
OK. Now I get it. Ashy. Who knew dry skin could be such a big deal.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Untapped Humor Potential
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3 comments:
This was all hilarious but what I really wanted to say was how truly great it is that you did a voice recording of from one of my very favorite albums ever. I was just listening to Owls yesterday. It is also my summer go-to for lying around on various surfaces.
anything i can mistake in the dark for being what i'm looking for is good enough for me
ashy is a big deal for black people, if you ashy it means you can't take care of yo self. like you don't lotion up after you shower.
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