Rat Fink

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, Martha. This is Diane Deckerhauser calling from Poway.

Hello, from Poway, California?

Yes, indeed.

Well, welcome to the show. How can we help you?

I was chatting with a friend, and we were talking about dogs and kids and whatever.

And I was saying that my dogs were rat-thinking all over the house, and it was driving me crazy.

And she said, rat-thinking? What’s that?

And I said, well, you know, it’s when the dogs are kind of going crazy all over the house,

And they’re playing, and they’re carrying on and barking and having a good time.

And so she said, oh, I’ve never heard of that before.

Does it apply to kids also?

I thought, probably.

I don’t know.

Yeah, if they’re chewing up the couch, sure.

Yeah, yeah.

So I thought, you know, I started to think, well, where does it come from?

And, you know, I remember using fink in the 60s and, you know, as somebody was a snitch or, you know, a bad person or something.

But then I don’t know how it evolved into dogs and kids rat finking around the house.

Well, Diane, if you grew up in the 60s, then maybe you remember.

I remember those little rat fink, those little plastic rat finks that everybody had in elementary school.

I’ve never heard of them.

Well, that’s because you came along a little bit later, Grant.

But you know what I’m talking about, Diane?

I vaguely remember them.

What did you give them?

Cereal box?

Cracker Jacks?

Yeah, or little gumball machines.

Everybody had rat things.

They looked like a rat.

They looked like a little rat up on its hind legs and little flat ears.

And they were ugly, ugly, ugly.

What did you do with them?

You know, I didn’t have one.

Oh, you didn’t?

I didn’t.

There are listeners right now pounding the dashboard, remembering.

Did you have this instead of dolls?

This would explain a lot.

Yeah, I had a pocket full of rat finks.

Everybody had rat finks.

You traded them.

They’re a little hard plastic.

Well, they didn’t make it to the 70s in my childhood.

How important could they be?

We had rocks as pets, if you remember, in the 70s.

Oh, right, yeah.

A rat fink, well, it’s complicated.

It tends to be related to fink, like you said, Diane, which is somebody, a scab or somebody who goes against the union or somebody who tattles or informs to the government, maybe a narc, that sort of thing.

Somebody who turns his friends in so that he’ll get off scot-free and not be convicted himself.

And at some point in the 1960s, around 1961, we know for sure Rat Fink kind of became this set phrase, which is worse than a fink.

But the weird thing is in there, right about that time, there was a comedian by the name of Jackie Cannon.

It’s K-A-N-N-O-N who put out a couple comedy albums about rat finks.

And he opened up the Rat Fink Club in New York City.

And he describes it as not being particularly pejorative, kind of making fun of the catchphrase of the day.

And there was the people who wrote the play The Fantastics, if you remember this.

It ran for like a million years in New York.

They created a play that had Rat Fink in its name.

So at some point, Rat Fink wasn’t all that bad, but it kind of continued on.

And today, if you saw somebody Rat Fink, you just mean that they’re a despicable person.

But I’ve never heard of a dog Rat Fink.

No, me neither.

You know, I wonder if it’s just a family thing because we’ve used it for years, I think.

You know, it’s when the dogs are—well, we also use the word frapping,

Which is a frantic random activity period for dogs.

And they can go absolutely bonkers.

But rat thinking normally is at least two, you know,

And they’re playing together and having just a marvelous time.

And that way the only dogs can.

Yeah, or cats, little kittens at 5 p.m., 5 or 6 p.m.

Yeah, they’re awake.

Well, that’s the best that we can do right now.

But I wouldn’t be surprised if we find out that rat fink is used in a similar way somewhere else outside your family.

We’ll wait and see what other listeners say.

Yeah, we’ll hear about it.

I love it.

Okay.

Thank you so much.

Thanks for calling.

Okay.

Bye, Diane.

Bye, Diane.

Bye-bye.

Well, if you know something about rat finking around, well, call us and rat fink with us, 877-929-9673.

Or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.