Transcript of “Hit ’Em With the Cardboard Oh-Ah and Dah-Dah”
You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it. I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette. And we received an email from Michael Feeney in Las Vegas, Nevada.
He was telling us about a term that his youngest sister made up one year around Christmas time. His mother was wrapping lots of presents, and as she used up the wrapping paper, she would discard each of the empty rolls. And Michael writes,
We five children would grab the cardboard tubes and run around bopping each other on the head for kicks. The youngest one didn’t have a lot of words yet, but started yelling the word Barcha barcha when she saw one. And he says, I assume that that’s defined as the sound made by a hollow cardboard tube when it bounces off of somebody’s head. We all adopted that word and used it with our children. Have you all ever heard this term or can my sister claim its invention?
I hereby christen the term Barcha Barcha as belonging to your sister. Congratulations to Michael’s sister.
But, Martha, over the years, how many emails and phone calls have we received where families come up with names either for the empty cardboard tube, for paper towels or wrapping paper or toilet paper, or the sound that they make?
Yeah, yeah.
I remember the guy who called us and he said that his family called empty toilet paper rolls owa-owas because they would use them for kazoos, you know?
Yeah.
And apparently empty toilet paper rolls are really inspiring because there are all these different names that families have specifically for that thing, like drit-drit and da-da and hoo-hoo.
Because if you’re not banging people on the head with them, you’re using them as musical instruments, right?
Well, it’s really satisfying, isn’t it? When you bang with one of those long ones, it’s sort of like popping bubble wrap or something, I think. It’s got that really satisfying barcha barcha sound.
Now I’m going to start using that.
Well, Martha and I are still in the collecting game where we want to hear your family’s words for either the sounds that those tubes make when you hit somebody with them or when you make a noise through them or the names for the tubes themselves.
We don’t recommend violence, so be gentle with each other.
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