Paragoge (par-a-go’-ge): The addition of a letter or syllable to the end of a word. A kind of metaplasm.
“My little cutesy wootesy. My little ba-ba baby boo-boo! Grandmama loves you more than gummies, or gin & tonic, or Lucy Strikes. Let’s play bouncy on my knee, Little Barty.”
I am 64 and Grandmama still treats me like a baby when she comes to visit me and my wife. She stayed for a week. She brought a bottle, Pampers, Zwiebach toast (for my teething), Simulac, a portable crib, and my blanky,
It was totally, uncontrollably, weird. And I liked it. I liked being cutesy-wootsey. And crawling around the living room in my onesey. I loved free range pooping in my die-pee. My wife took care of my hiney hygiene so things wouldn’t get too weird with Grandmama. Sometimes my wife would give me a bath in my tubby and wash my hair with no tears baby shampoo. It was wonderful.
My ba-ba really brought me back to the good old days when Mama would feed me warm Simulac and I would suck on the rubber nipple. I still have a Simulac shake now and then, but they are really fattening.
My blanky hadn’t been washed for forty years. I could smell Mama’s cheap perfume on it—“Bonkers Babe.”
Mama was wild. She drove a motorcycle and hung out the “Owl’s Claw” down by the beach. She drank shots and beers and carried a gun—a sweet-looking little Beretta .25. She taught me how to shoot it at my eighth birthday party. I idolized her.
“Dirty” Dad had left me and mom when I was three. He ran off with a stunt-driver from the “Bimbos, Bimps and Backdrafts,” a traveling stunt-driving circus. Her name was Mabelliene. She was a cheating slut, but Dad was smitten by her stunts. He loved it when she drove through a flaming hoop with the car’s horn blowing, jumped out the driver’s side window, and let the car smash into a concrete wall, where it exploded and burst into flames.
When Dad left, Mama didn’t give a shit. She had a big party with her biker buddies—“The Karma Busters.” We danced all night. Mama wouldn’t let me drink or smoke. I was only 3. I had my first toke when I was eleven at Mama’s annual “Fu*k the Bastard Party,” The best part of the party was beating the shit out of the custom-made Dirty Dad Piñata with crowbars. The piñata was filled with tabs of blotter acid and “Dark Side of the Moon” CDs. Each tab of acid had a little cartoon middle finger printed on it. Mama was a stickler for detail.
Dirty Dad died 8 years ago when Mabelliene lit him on fire for “speeding in wrong lane”—that’s stunt driver jargon for cheating on her. She duct-taped Dirty Dad to the hoop of fire, doused him with gasoline, and boom, sent him up in flames screaming. Too bad Mama didn’t get a chance to be there,
Mama died 15 years ago. She had a heart-attack trying to kick start her vintage Harley. At least I still had Grandmama! Now, she’s 109 and wears an ankle monitor for the “incident” at the grocery store. We love to have her visit from “Never-Never Land Nursing Home.”
I said, “Grandmama ba-ba! Pleezy weezy!” and pulled blanky up to my chin.
The Daily Trope 