Mu husband and I say “bee” to each other all the time. I’m not sure when or why I even started saying it; all I know is it started very early in our marriage. I would stick my head into a room is he was in and say, in a cheerful voice: “Beeee!” Or I would give him a snuggle if I needed comforting and say in a wistful tone: “Bee.” Somewhere along the line, he picked up on it, and added more “bees”. He would come home from work and say “Beebeebee?” and I’d come running. Now, both of us, when happy, instead of humming, you’re likely to catch us uttering random, tuneless “beebeebees”. I told him, about a year ago, that when I say “bee”, it just means “I love you and I’m happy to be here spending time with you.” but, you know, shortened into one convenient syllable. Now we greet each other (and sometimes the cats, but I have a habit of calling them “boo”) with cheerful “Hello, Bee!” It’s spreading into our family and friends. It probably doesn’t translate well on a message board, but I tell you, when you see someone you love look at you and their eyes crinkle up in happiness, and they just say, softly, “beeeee!”, damn. It just feels good. Especially when some of the gruffest old fellas see you coming, get a little smile on their face that they try to hide, look at you sideways and say in a deep, manly voice: “Bee.” You can just see their mind clicking along, thinking, “There, I said it. I meant it, too.”
Other than that, let’s see… mosquitos are called “skeeties”, coffee is called “copy” (both of these picked up from various children in our lives), “dude” is a compliment (he is such a dude!), cats are “kiddens”, the garbage disposal is “the pig”, and most news is initially greeted by a loud “Well HOODY-HOO-HA, then!” (from an episode of Fishbar).
Oh, yeah, Fishbar. That opens up a few more: Assassin is pronounced ASS-a-sins, voila is vee-ola, and we often threaten to beat each other up with bread. All ham is Royal Ham. We don’t just “eat” things, we “eat the hell” out of them. Swedes are suspicious.
Also… ALL cereal is now called “Pirates of the Caribbean”, due to a close friend who kept insisting to us that the best and cheapest cereal was “Pirates of the Caribbean” and we should get down to Fred Meyer and buy it up before it goes away, and then related to us how all of his meals *not * cooked by his girlfriend was “Pirates of the Caribbean”. He brings it to work. He’s an insurance broker.
All Suzukis are called “Jeeps”, because of Lady Jesus from back home. She drove a Suzuki Vitara, and it had a top that came off, and she called it a “Jeep”, and insisted that any SUV that you could take the top off of is properly called a “Jeep”. She believed (truly) that this allowed into an exclusive club of Jeep owners. So now, every time my friends and family see a Suzuki of any kind, we say to each other, “Hey, check out the Jeep!”
Shit, Lady Jesus opens up even more… “never lick a gift horse in the mouth”, etc. But then this list would never end.
Heh.