Parent Language

As I sit here munching on my tasty, crunchy, melty, spicy, nori seaweed snack – the better to absorb iodine to protect my thyroid from possible radiation from Japan – I ruminate on the night my father taught me to count from one to ten in Japanese – he did -complete with mnemonic devices. It was about 9:30 PM, a dark, balmy night, and we were standing behind our car, under the glow of a parking lot light at the Audubon Shopping Center in Audubon, NJ, waiting to pick my mom up from her shift at JC Penneys. While we waited he taught me: Itchy Knee – scratch your knee, Sun She – make a sun with your arms over your head and point to yourself if you’re a girl, Go Loco – make circles with your pointer finger around your ear, Hitchy Hotchy – there’s not a lot you can do with that, but it sounds like hippy, hoppy, so hop from foot to foot. Finish up with coo joo. That just sounds so cute you won’t forget it. That was more than 40 years ago.

Now that I am learning Japanese through Rosetta Stone, I realize that he did a pretty good job. Itchy knee, sun, she, go loco, hitchy, hotchy, coo, joo translates to ichi, ni, san, shi, go, doko, nanna, hatchi, koo, jyu. He got the number “seven” wrong or maybe I don’t remember it right.

He drove a medic’s jeep in Japan during World War II. My uncle said my dad was too young; it must have been the Korean War. My dad wasn’t there to speak for himself, and my uncle isn’t here to state his case anymore, either, but I ask you – Does that sound like Korean to you? And where else would a maintenance man with an eighth education come up with 1-10 in Japanese? (The internet wasn’t invented yet and I’m pretty sure the Pitman library didn’t have a foreign language collection.) He drove a medic’s jeep in Japan in World War II. He did.