Silly, goofy and cute traditions your parents started when you were little

In My Humble Opinion
1

When I was just a little girl, Dad used to sing me a song. It had been a long time since I’d heard it & I googled it up to remember the words. Turns out it was from Guys and Dolls. Don’t worry, Mods- this isn’t the entire song. Just the one verse Dad sang to me

I love you a bushel and peck
A bushel and peck
And a hug around the neck
A hug around the neck
And a barrel and a heap
A barrel and a heap
And I’m talking in my sleep
About you

We also used to take long drives when there was nothing else to do. We’d listen to WHB, the only Oldies station back then & he’d quiz me on which band was playing at the time. After a while, I got really good at it & started stumping* him*.

I can see myself carrying on these traditions when I have kids. Sounds silly, but I’m trying to remember all this stuff specifically so I can do just that. Like Dad will live on through me. ::shrug:: What can I say. I miss him a bunch.

Anyway, what were the fun songs/games/pet names your parents used to entertain you?

2

Great thread idea. If I come up with one that my parents did with me, I promise to share - we certainly did the whole “listen to oldie’s” thing, too.

My story is one I do with my kids. We celebrate a secular, Santa-oriented Christmas. The kids get a few presents Christmas Eve night from the family, and then, on Christmas morning, a couple from Santa (we are paranoid about over-presenting, so the total # is always limited).

Anyway, they are now 6 and 4, but ever since my oldest was about 3, we started a tradition that after they opened up their Santa presents and helped clean up the wrapping, they had to thank Santa. How is this accomplished? Why, by shouting “THANK YOU SANTA!!” up the chimney, of course! Everyone knows that chimneys provide a direct pipeline back to the North Pole, don’t they?

And yes, we have it on video. :wink: :smiley:

3

WordMan, one of my sister’s trademark lines is “Thank you Santa Claus, wherever you are!”, first said after she got a GIANT stuffed tiger when she was four.

The cornflakes family is big on tradition. I’m amazed that more families aren’t like this. Just off the top of my head:
-Dad used to get jigsaw puzzles and black jellybeans for Christmas. He first got black jellybeans when my sister was in college and couldn’t afford a jigsaw puzzle (he liked both and they sound about the same when you rattle the box.)
-Sis and I will press our noses together, look each other in the eye and roar, sometimes for a minute or more. We’ve been doing this since 1968 or so. The roar comes from a book she used to read to me; we press noses together because it makes you have one eye in the middle of your forehead.
-Sis is a “pooker bird”, because she had long legs and has big eyes when she was little. Dad drew a picture and they settled on that name.
-My other sister and I ruff at each other. Don’t ask; I don’t know why.
-Dad used to sing us to sleep with WWII drinking songs, like She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and Those Swinging Doors. I tried it a few times, but my kids always cried…
-I rub my son’s head a lot… I mean a LOT, as in both hands massaging his scalp until he finally backs away. He likes it.

4

My parents thought it would be charming to let us think of some of our misprounounced baby-talk Konkani-Marathi mix was real language so even today my sister and I will use babytalk words in conversation with our relatives and they’ll just give us quizzical looks and my parents will have to embarrasedly explain that it’s what they LET us call a particular object b/c they thought it was “cute.” One great example is is the word “pangroon” which means “blanket” but I knew as “gangoo” until last year when I made a fool of myself in front of some people and my parents were all “uh, honey, actually that’s not a real word.” Although I have to say that teaching us the Marathi-Konkani mix comes in handy since I really identify more as Marathi anyway and for some reason these made-up words have just been incorporated into our family language which is why my parents only end up telling us retrospectively after we end up looking like asses.

5

Every night as my mom put me to bed she’d say “But soft what light in yon window breaks, it is the east and Juliet is the sun” and I’d say back “Good night, good night, parting is such sweet sorrow that I shall say goodnight 'til it be morrow”

It makes me realize how young my mom was when she had me…she thought it was so very cool to train her 3 year old (me) to quote Shakespeare.

6

I can’t think of any that my parents started, offhand, so I’ll share one that my uncle started.

My grandparents had 4 ceramic candleholders that they put out every Christmas. They looked like chiorboys, and each one’s book had a letter on it. Put together, they spelled N-O-E-L. They had these for as long as anyone can remember. When he was a child, my uncle began to rearrange the chiorboys to read L-E-O-N on the day after Christmas. Since the 26th was their anniversary and they would host the first of the “week after Christmas visits”, my grandparents routinely failed to notice the change until it was pointed out by a guest, but no one knew who the prankster was. Every December 26, without fail, the choirboys would mysteriously rearrange themselves. My grandmother was a bit of a neat freak, very organized, and while she took it in good humor, she was just a little miffed that someone would rearrange her stuff. She’d laugh in spite of herself, though. Story goes that no one had any idea who was behind it until my uncle admitted to it years later. He still continued to do it out of habit and to give my grandmother a little nudge every year until she passed away and I bought the house.

While going through their items, I found the candleholders and gave them to my uncle. “They belong more to you than they do to the house,” I told him, and he was touched to have them.

That Christmas, the family gathered at his house, and it was a bit sad, since it was the first Christmas without my grandmother, his mother. Since it was also his and his wife’s first Christmas in their new house, many of us were seeing it for the first time, and he gave us the tour. Proudly displayed on the mantle in the living room were the four candleholders in a row, N-O-E-L, just like they had stood for the last 40 or more advents.

After dinner, everyone mingled off to different rooms to relax and digest, when a loud belly laugh was heard coming from the living room. My uncle and grandfather, tears in their eyes, were standing in front of the mantle, laughing at the sight of four ceramic candleholders, standing in their annual post Christmas formation, L-E-O-N, knowing that the tradition was in good hands.

7

Every Mother’s day (until recently, as the store is no longer around here) my Dad got up early and got a dozen white castles. On her first Mother’s Day (right after finding out they were pregnant with my brother after five years of trying) they had white castles and have ever since.

8

When I was a little girl, my Dad and I used to go to airports together. We like airplanes, my Dad and I. Usually they were small municipal type airports. You know the little ones that Pipers, Cesnas and small Beechcraft fly out of. Sometimes big commercial airports.

We’d go and watch the planes take off and land. Sometimes we’d talk to the people who owned the planes. My dad knew the people who worked at the airports. Sometimes we’d get to go out and check out their planes. My Dad and whoever would look at the engine and I’d pretend to fly. We hung out at airporst like some people hang out at their local bar. We’d get a cup of coffee (cocoa for me) and a snack or something. It was great.

Later I found out my Dad used to fly. He had to give up flying because of his panic attacks. It was the early 70’s and no one really knew what they were and there wasn’t the treatment there is now. I really cherish the times my Dad and I hung out at the airports. I can’t really do that with my son. We’d probably get arrested just hanging out at the airport.