Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"Given time people can develop vocabularies consisting entirely of hand motions and obscure references. My mother's parents were like that; their nouns in no way corresponded to conventional English, in familial conversation, after they retired.

"It wasn't until after my grandfather's death that I was listening to a CD of 1940s radio comedies and realized that it contained many of their old in-jokes. They'd been doing the equivalent of communicating primarily in 'Simpsons' references for decades, but by the time I was growing up they'd outlived everyone in the family who knew them for what they were."

-- sara, 2011-07-28