A brazillion is five, and that's not a euphemism

So, everyone develops their own sort of language among friends... a conglomeration of hilarious misspoken words, inside jokes, and nonsense that stitches together the people you spend your life talking to.  I've been adopted into several lovely groups of friends, each with their own little lexicon, and along the way, those words have become so entwined with my own strange word choices that sometimes I forget that if I say something is adorkable, the whole world doesn't automagically know what I was meanting.  Look at me, I was just kidding.

A hilarious example that I was sadly not present for, but thoroughly enjoy the retelling of--and I may have the actual details wrong, but it goes something like this:


A dear friend was conversing with her grown daughter (also a dear friend, for my life is multi-generational, and that's rad) who had just recently acquired a new earring hole.  Exasperated mother says in classic five-year-old hyperbole: You have a brazillion holes in your head!  To which calmly smart-alleck daughter replied, "Five?"  Thus, a brazillion is five. 

Not to pick on any of my friends over-much, but the same darling exasperated mother once made another infamous comment regarding a certain bachelorette party photograph.  She, in her darling innocence, couldn't understand why the bride had sewn tea bags to her veil...  We use this example to shield her from unnecessary information as our way of saying "Trust us, you really don't want us to explain what they're talking about."

I also have the uncanny ability to turn things that are completely innocent and normal into odd euphemisms.  It's a gift really.  I mean, my darling sister-in-law has the ExaggerRay! with which she can turn any normal situation into a comic book scenario where normal people turn into superheroes.  I... I have the gift of euphemism.

Case in point:

Some words are just fun to say.  Pudding is one... but it's better if you say it like it looks.  Puuuuuuuuuuuding. With a pouty little "u".  And wiggle a little.  Right, so that being established--there are these things from Minute Maid I think that are like those icee pops we used to get as kids all the time in the neon colors that was basically colored sugar water, only these are 100% juice!  How rad!  And when they melt, they become little tubes of juice.  Now, "tube of juice" is also fun to say.  Tuuuuuuuuube of juuuuuuuuuuice.  Try it.  Go on, I'll wait.



(Of course, waiting in a blog is really just pressing enter a couple of times, so I'm not really waiting at all, just faking it so you have the feeling you're participating.)



See, I told you it was fun.  Now, imagine me and a friend sitting around one hot May afternoon (because it's Texas, and it's ugly hot in May, especially if you're outside, wearing time-period inappropriate clothing, which we were) having a tube of juice.  It's very refreshing.  But somehow the combination of pure juice and heat and the propensity to giggle at things like tuuuuuuube of juuuuuuuice lead to darling-exasperated-mother asking "What on earth are you doing?"  To which, we could only reply, mid-giggle "tuuuuuuuube of juuuuuuuuice" and then I said the fateful words...

"And that's not a euphemism."

Only, once you say that, it sort if becomes a euphemism... and euphemism now falls in the category of words that don't follow the a/an rule along with honest.  H=consonant.  E=vowel.  An honest question about a euphemism.... grammar is weird...