A Dose of Humor – That DAMbanna!

5 Minutes for Parenting’s weekly column, A Dose of Humor, is here to remind you to take your humor pill regularly as the best medicine to treat the side effects of parenting! It features a different blogger every week and is hosted by Rachel at Grasping for Objectivity in My Subjective Life.

When my boys were small, the big BATMAN movie was released so EVERYTHING in our home became BATTIZED (drop the P from Baptised, there was Nothing spiritual about this era).

Their rooms were referred to as the BATCAVE, our car was the BATMOBLIE, I was THE JOKER ( I wanted to be Catwoman–obviously, they didn’t think I was hot enough).

Anyway, a daily routine for the boys was for them to bring me towels (capes) for me to tie on around their necks, so they could become BATMAN and ROBIN. (I don’t remember who my youngest was supposed to be…)

Well, baby Jon, at 2-3 years old, would always bring me a bandanna to tie around his neck (little rebel bat) instead of a towel. It was still a “cape”, just bright with a busy pattern.

This child was SO attached to this bandanna. Every morning, he’d insist I “tie one on” him. What was really funny though, is he called it his DAMbanna.

Because we did not cuss in our house, (only in the car alone and only if things got really stressful!) it was HILARIOUS when he would talk about his DAMbanna.

Now, forgive me if this offends you that we found this funny and didn’t correct him. If he were to use a random curse word, yes, we would have corrected him and tried not to laugh in his face, but this was different. It was only referring to his little cape, and that precious little innocent toddler voice was calling it a DAMbanna! Too cute.

Okay, now you need to know, that I’ve raised 3 boys ,so our house is a bit weird. My husband and I would have WAY too much fun with this.

Typical morning at the Murphy’s:

(ME) ” Good morning , my little precious Boys! Come give Mommy kisses!”

(Boys #1 and #2) (kiss, kiss) “Good morning! You’re the best Mommy in the whole wide world–we love you SO much more than Daddy!”
(Okay, they didn’t really say that last part, but it’s the way I CHOOSE to remember the morning, and I’m the one tellin’ the story–Big AL can get his OWN blog site to tell HIS version!)

(baby Jon) “Mommy, where’s my DAMbanna?”

(me) “Baby, I don’t know where that DAMbanna is!”

(me) “Boy’s …have you hidden your brother’s DAMbanna?”

(boys) “No mom, we wouldn’t never hide that DAMbanna!”

(me) yelling downstairs, “Big AL , have you seen Baby Jon’s DAMbanna?”

(Big AL) yelling upstairs “NO! I’ve told him he needs to put that DAMbanna in his toybox at night so he’ll know where it is!”

(me) yelling at Big Al, “He’s ONLY 2(or 3) years old! He can’t keep track of a DAMbanna!”

(me) “Don’t worry Baby Jon. Mommy will find that Dambanna if it’s the last thing I do!”

Well, you get the picture.

It was kinda’ like a FREE cuss word, we could use without feelin’ guilty.

As a pastor’s daughter, I’ve always looked for ways to kinda’ sin without the guilt.

Yeah, I know.

So, I’m just curious, did your children, or little ones you know, ever have funny words or phrases that were just too funny to correct?

Let’s keep it clean though!

PLEASE tell me I am not alone.

(I think my Pastor reads my posts, I hope he’ll still let me teach Sunday School!)

This article was originally published on December 12, 2008 at MATTER OF FACT.

If you would like to be considered for A Dose of Humor, email Rachel for more details at DoseOfHumor (at) gmail (dot) com.