The Urban Dictionary says, "What the feezy?" is "like what the fuck, only cooler." Hmmm, I never thought of myself as cool. Ok, in college, I was into British New Wave bands at least six months before everyone else. For that six months, in my head, I was mind-blowingly cool. Not so much since then.
I say "feezy" because my 7-year-old shouldn't really hear me shout "fuck." Poor little thing puts up with a lot of shit from me, but my sailor mouth is one thing I haven't subjected her to. Much.
So we're headed to Dalian American International School this morning to drop Eleanor off. I'm in the passenger seat, Eleanor is behind me in the van (annoyingly refusing to be chatty in front of our driver, but that's another story). Qi Tong Lin is doing his usual stellar job of driving safely on the inherently chaotic streets of China. Suddenly a very large bus blows by on our right, horn blazing. I exclaim, "What the feezy?!" Qi Tong Lin looks at me and says, "Feezy?"
Oh shit. Now I have to explain, in Chinese, that I have substituted feezy for fuck. That I would have shouted, "What the fuck?!" had I been alone. And there is no way in hell I'm gonna look up the Chinese word for fuck and speak it out loud to the nice man I have known for only 3 weeks. Especially in front of Eleanor.
But I do grab the dictionary, a permanent fixture in our van. I mumble, "bu hao de hua" ("not good words"), and frantically look up "substitute." Not much luck there. The explanation I am finally able to construct, in broken Chinese, is, "I not say not good words near Eleanor. I say 'feezy.'" Qi Tong Lin seems to get it and teaches me the correct Chinese phrase, "man ren de hua" (literally, rude people talk), for cursing.
So I leave it at that. I never explain which rude words I am omitting and I never explain to him that I am prone to extended rants full of man ren de hua. Given the traffic situation in China, there's a good chance he is going to eventually find that out anyway.
But now I am tempted to tell him how cool I am. Does anyone know the Chinese word for cool?
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But a few months back, “someone” (all names have been changed to protect me) decided to leave the door to the back yard open one afternoon and into the early evening. The next morning, I found some “organically recycled stuff” in the kid’s homework/toy closet. It was clear there was more than the normal 4 mammals living in our house. out of the corner of my eye I saw something move, then almost instantly I heard my daughter scream and run out of the homework/toy closet (it’s really a walk-in pantry, but we never used it as that). the door was closed and they (wife and two kids)stuffed kitchen towels under the door. It was just me and the unwanted 5th mammal in there. Only one of us was leaving that room alive. I found a broom in there and let me just say, the hand to hand combat I learned early in life came back quickly. What followed next was a haze of screaming, cursing and swinging and smashing of things that frightened even me. when it was over and I had killed that mouse, I cracked the door open and asked for a trash bag.
my wife mocked me with, “Here’s a ‘mutherfeezing, feezy, feezer, feeze you, you feezing feezer, beeyotch, c-word (I can’t even type that), die beyotch, feezy feezing feezer, feeze you, die mutherfeezer’ bag.”
“Those were some bad words Dad,” one of my daughters told me.
I’m still not sure if the mouse died from blunt force trauma to the head or from all my cursing.