Dad’s secret code

We speak in code, my wife and I. If it weren’t for these pass-worded tete-a-tete’s, we would never have had the chance to hold an adult dialogue at all.

Brilliant.

It started out simply, as one of us just spelling out a word we needed to use in front of the kids.

It didn’t last long, however, because I can’t spell. I would have to first ask “how do you spell toffee?” and she would spell it back, and then I would say well, let’s put the t-o-f-f-e-e away before our youngest child notices, and at that point, of course, the toffee cat was out of the bag. Suddenly, and before I could make a break for it, everybody wanted dad's special English toffee.

We had to find a way to communicate without the kids understanding what we were saying, and getting to the p-o- p-s-i-c-l-e-s before supper.

My wife flippantly suggested that I learn how to spell.

After two months of phonics, headaches and a subsequent year of therapy, she realized the futility of such a mission and her foolish quest was abandoned — not without some emotional scarring.

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It all came to a head when Sister Johnson from our church group came over to pick up her casserole dish and my daughter said to her, “Are you Sister Johnson, the megalomaniac with a bad dye job, or the Sister Johnson on 3rd East, with the husband that sleeps during church and just lost his job?”

At that point, careless banter between my wife and me became forboton, and casual chats with audiences were outlawed. The code became mandatory.

Having a private code is fine once you get the hang of it — remembering that it is all contingent on the sophistication of the cipher itself — because once the kids learn the language, the game must be abbreviated or aborted.

Remember that even though they may share your genes, they can pick your brain apart with a toothpick.

“Idaho” for example — or anything “Idahoan,” like alfalfa, wind or free-range farm stock — used to represent my wife’s old friends that she didn’t want to hang around with anymore. But then, suddenly, it was abbreviated to refer to anything that couldn’t be said in front of other people.

“Peas and carrots” used to mean that one couldn’t speak on that subject in current company, but now it means doing stuff we don’t want to do that may very well be good for us in the long run.

So the phrase, “Are we having vegetables for dinner or potatoes like we had in Pocatello last week?” once meant, “Can't talk now — the friend who called last week is here.” Now, it is possible that it means, “Pay the bills before I get home — they were due last week.”

Or it might mean something totally different if I missed a memo with upgrades to the fake language we invented that was supposed to be a speed bump on the road to my children taking over the world.

It still beats learning to spell.

My quandary is, is having a secret language in keeping with my newfound principles of good fatherhood? Most of the good dads I know are in my church group, and my church prefers to keep everything on the up and up, transparent, out in the open.

I asked one of my church group friends how he handles controlling his proverbial toffee, Popsicles or any other controlled substance. He told me without blinking that he teaches his children to ask for permission.

Ask for permission? If that were possible, I wouldn’t have needed the palm reader for the CD player, or the voice command on the downstairs freezer.

“Honesty and personal restraint, huh? I bet next comes leading by example and self-control,” I joked. He nodded his head solemnly.

Oh. OK then.

This week, I am going to lose the code completely.

“Pass the potatoes, please,” I will say at the table. There are many things to which I could be referring by their way of thinking. I could be saying, “Isn’t it fun to say stuff that can’t be interpreted by the kids?” Or I could be saying that, “We will have to talk about the kids and their grades and their chores, and anything they will want to hear about later, at our secret dessert-eating meeting, alone together at the predetermined time in an undisclosed but pre-agreed upon location.”

Not one of them will anticipate that I would actually be up front about my needs and ideas. No one would think that I would be simple and uncomplicated and straight forward. No one expects me to, you know, say what I mean. The code is gone, and no one will know for years.

While my wife passes me the potatoes with a wink, my children will sit there puzzling, wracking their little brains out trying to “figure it out.”

It means that I like potatoes.

B-r-i-l-l-i-a-n-t!

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Davison writes about things he is familiar with: things like raising children, taking children to therapy, bailing children out of trouble, and trying not to beat up parents of other children when they yell at his children for not getting the basketball to their children. Read more from Davison at davisoncheneymegadad.blogspot.com.*

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