Dad Said

When I was a kid in the 1960s and 1970s, my dad called me "Curly" because I had very short hair. He also called me "Speedy" because I was very slow. My mom recently told me that. I thought Dad named me after one of The Three Stooges and the Alka-Seltzer mascot.

When I was a young kid, and my dad wanted a sip of whatever I was drinking, he would say, "Give me a schlupp." He spent some time in Germany with the U.S. Navy, so he sometimes threw in German words in his conversations. I just looked up the word "schlupp." It means "slip." Actually, "schluck" means "sip." I am almost 100 percent sure that he said "schlupp." Maybe, he combined "schluck" and "sip," but maybe he said "schluck." I was quite young. He also called me "bube," which, in German, means a young boy, a rogue, or a jack (the playing card). He pronounced it "buh-bie." "Bubbe" in Yiddish and pronounced about the same way, means grandmother.

"There are three ways to do things: your way, my way, and the Navy way. We're doing it my way." I never understood his answer because he was still in the Navy.