But what does it LOOK like?

Longtime relationships have their own shorthand that evokes whole series of memories. Far Side of Fifty's Words We Made Up reminded me of this. Everybody has a similar story, and likely more than one. The story of "Fee" makes Husband and me laugh every time we remember it.


The scene: Quiet evening, livingroom, Husband in his chair, I in mine. He, reading some periodical or other, and I doing the same. Suddenly, he raises his eyes from the page and asks in a curious tone, "Junie, what's this word?" (At the time I was, and still am to a somewhat lesser degree, the Omniscient Word Woman.)


"How do you spell it?" I asked.


He responded, "Fee, arr, ee..."


"Wait. 'Fee'?"



"Yeah." He began again to spell the word. "Fee, arr, ee..."



Perplexed: "'Fee'?"



"Yes! Fee!" He was growing frustrated with my interruption.

And he began once again.

"Fee, arr, ee..."



"Wait a minute. What does it look like?"



"What! What does what look like?"

The tension was building.



"Fee. What does it look like?"



Voice slightly raised: "What do you mean, 'What does it look like?' It's fee!"



"But," I shook my head, genuinely wanting to help but at a complete loss, "What shape is it?"



He looked at the word on the page.
He looked for a long time.



And then began to giggle, and couldn't stop. I began to laugh with him, not quite knowing why...and we spent a few minutes in complete meltdown hysteria.



The word is lost to both of us now, but we remember fee.

It looks like this: F