"More important than never letting yourself get fat is 'never let a man put his dirty how-do-you-do into your bajingo.'"

Since The Dormouse was born, I've struggled with appropriate verbiage for body parts. You see, I used to work as a therapist in a prison setting with sex offenders and I became very adept and comfortable with using the correct terminology for sex in a very matter-of-fact way. When you have to lead a group therapy session that uses this book as it's text, you get a little blasé about the subject matter.

As a result, a pet peeve of mine is the need to teach kids euphemisms and non-words for their body parts -- although bunky is pretty dang funny, I'll admit.

Fast forward a few years to when I meet, date and marry The KingofHearts, who is at the other end of the pendulum from me in this respect. In fact, he is patently unable to utter the word penis unless he pronounces it "pen-is."
Happiness.
Happ-i-ness
Hap... PIness
hap..PINESS
*whispers* hap *aloud* PENIS.
I did it! Ovaries. Uvula. Uterus. VAGINA!!!!
The KoH has actually used the following words in adult conversation:
  • Ding Ding
  • Hoo hoo
  • Dingy
  • Free Willy
  • Third leg
  • Pud
  • John Thomas
  • Sausage
  • Member
  • Unit
  • Lil' KingofHearts
  • Winky
  • Tool
  • Wang
  • Renob
  • One-eyed [insert animal/reptile/descriptive term here]

And those are just the words that I haven't managed to beat out of him in ten years.

My mother used to use the word tallywhacker. This always bothered me because it reminds me of a traditional Jamaican folk song sung by Harry Belafonte.
Come, Mister tallywhacker, tally me banana
Daylight come and me wan' go home
You mean those aren't the right words? Gee, I can't imagine where I got my prejudice about correct body part terminology.

That being said, I am uncomfortable with teaching my daughters to refer to their Girl Parts as the vagina. Besides the fact that what most people are talking about when they are referring to the "vagina" is NOT actually the vagina -- Go ahead, try and point to it. Did you wipe your vagina? No. -- it just sounds wrong coming out of a little girl's mouth. Why it doesn't bother me when that same little girl says penis, I cannot explain. Call it a double standard.

The Dormouse has a kid's book about bodies and therefore knows the difference between a vagina and a vulva. But she can't seem to remember the actual word vulva. It comes out as vulma, Volvo, valvula, and even the Seinfeld-esque, mulva.
Joseph: Boys have a penis, girls have a vagina!
Phoebe: [to Kimble] I see you taught them the basics.
This morning, I let her come in the shower with me (we're hippies around our house and I occasionally bathe with my four year old --- shut up, I do) and she made this observation:

"Momma, you have water dripping off your valvoline."

For more fun, check out this list. Who knew there were so many?
For the film buffs who want to impress the Interweb, you can list in the comments the source of all the quotes.