strip "pididdle," anyone?

[Lynne Murphy]

--On Tuesday, March 5, 2002 9:39 pm -0500 Richard Gage <rgage at INTRAH.ORG>
wrote:

> PIDIDDLE: a car with one functioning headlight.  Also, a roadtrip game
> that
> rewards the player who spots the pididdle first.  In my father's day,
> the winner
> got a kiss.  But these days, there's a variant called "strip pididdle."
> Shouldn't
> "pididdle" be in the OED?
>
To me, this was 'perdiddle' (western NY state).  I never saw it spelt, but
we did pronounce it with a distinct 'r' in my family.  I knew variations
with kisses (suggested by my parents) and punches (practiced by my
brothers).  By this time (mid-70s) 'punch-bug' was around too.

The other game we played in the car is 'zit'.  You call out 'zit' when you
see a horse, donkey, or mule.  If you're the first one to call out 'zit',
you get the points for it:  1 point for a 'normal' horse, 3 points for a
white horse, 7 for a mule/donkey.  If you mistakenly call out 'zit' for
something that's not a horse, you lose 2 points.  If you drive by a
cemetary, then the person on the side of the car opposite the cemetary may
say 'bury your zits' in which case the person (or people) on the cemetary
side of the car lose all their points.  11 points wins the game.  My
father, a funeral director, and always the driver in our car, would cheat
and drive around blocks so that the cemetaries were never on his side of
the car.  I've only met one person outside my family who's played this game.

Lynne

Dr M Lynne Murphy
Lecturer in Linguistics
Acting Director, MA in Applied Linguistics
School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

phone +44-(0)1273-678844
fax   +44-(0)1273-671320