D Is For Dork, Dorks, and Dorky

Tonight at Raleigh House, we had a freewheeling conversation at family dinner about words beginning with various letters as announced by Joe. (Longtime Fans will no doubt recall we are two dorks, endeavoring to raise another fine pair of dorks. This is the kind of thing dorks do at dinner.) It all began with Joe telling Ted that Joe and Mommy do not like unicycles. U is the letter of the week in Joe's classroom, and may have also been the letter of the day in phonics, though it was a bit unclear. So on the way home, Julie, Joe, and Clara were trying to think of words beginning with U:

Undershirt

Underwear

Under (duh)

Undercoat (Joe insists this is a word)

Umbrella (the classic)

Ukulele (the other classic)

Uncle (Like Uncle Scott! Hi, Uncle Scott!)

Uno

Unicycle

There may have been other words. Dinnertime saw us ruminating on U (again), I, N, B, D, F, S, and M. There may have been other letters, too, and those listed are no doubt out of order. Julie thought the best exchange came with M. Ted said Michigan, which led to Julie saying Michigander, which elicited an eye roll from Ted, and an indignant "It's fun to say!" from Julie, which prompted Ted to say "Montevideo!" Minnesota residents will recognize this as the name of a town in the southern part of the state, and fans of Minnesota Public Radio's weather reporting will recognize it as an oft-mentioned town when discussing temperature readings from around the state. This led to MINNESOTA-!!!!! (duh, again)--and all the other M states, of which there are a lot, though we said Mississippi River, rather than Mississippi, as those knowledgeable about the North Star State (or Indigo Girls lyrics) will know that the Mississippi River starts in Minnesota "at a place that you can walk across with five steps down." Our consideration of M closed with a discussion of the difference between monkeys and apes* in the wake of Joe's monkey contribution.

Fans, it was D for dorky, and M for marvelous.

*Monkeys have tails; apes do not. Did you know that, Fans?