The now-famous over-the-top Rice toilet paper

So the question remains: Do you run the toilet paper over the top, or down the wall?

My dear late mother was a down-the-wall gal, in no uncertain terms. I'm sure she felt that toilet paper looked better that way, being more neatly snuggled up against the pink and blue ceramic tiles that still grace our bathroom today. Dad and I, on the other hand, had to have that paper running over the top, no doubt about it. When we needed a huge toilet-clogging handful quickly, we needed it! (Of course, whether you, dear reader, needed to know all this remains an open question.)

So the discussion (or rather, the guerrilla war) of the toilet paper went on for years. Sometimes, Dad or I would come into the bathroom hoping for a quick handful--only to find that as we spun the roll down, it merely flapped around in apparent glee at our misfortune. Even if we did put the roll on "our" way, we sometimes found that it had been surreptitiously re-positioned the "other" way.

And of course, that toilet paper roll was only the beginning. The cultural (and gender) issue of the toilet seat is also well-known in many Lakewood homes. I remember reading about a statistic years ago that there were thousands of accidents annually in America involving toilet seats. The issue, for those of you who are single, is simply this: Up or down? Since this is a family paper, we'll not go into the significant lower issue of whether the area around the toilet seat should be carpeted. Or what usually ends up on that carpet.

Leaving the bathroom (and probably none too soon), we proceed to the kitchen, where other cultural trials continued. Of course, our moms were usually the cooks when we were kids, and the kitchen was their domain. Dad and I might have the privilege of washing dishes, but that stove belonged to Betty Rice!

At least, that scenario lasted 'till I got hungry one night. The parents were out bowling or something, and supper would have to wait. The weekly trip to the market was due, so there weren't too many things to eat in the fridge to tide over my junior high-sized stomach. Looking in the cupboard, I came across a Mason jar filled with some popping corn. Unsure how to make popcorn, I did know that Mother seemed to preheat the oven to 325 degrees for a number of foods, so I did the same. I then took out the roasting pan and dumped the entire contents of the Mason jar into the roaster, along with a stick of butter, and about a cup of salt, and shoved the mixture into the oven. I then went to my bedroom to build a model.

Now, I've never had a sense of smell, so it was the black smoke that first got my attention. As I ran to the kitchen door, I discovered that the popcorn had blown the lid off the roaster and had blown open the door of the oven. Sticky black goo covered the oven, the kitchen floor, and my future as a chef. And naturally, just then the folks got home. If there had been more kids like me, I doubt whether moms would have wanted to leave the kitchen for the workplace (or perhaps kids like me drove them out!).

Moving from the kitchen to the subject of linguistics, I recall reading as a child that the dividing line between eastern and western speaking dialects was considered to be the Cuyahoga River, at least at that time. Folks east of the river often had that "New England" way of speaking, while out West (here in Lakewood) we spoke "Midwest."

Now, many of you know that my parents were from different parts of the country. Mom was a Southern gal, and Dad hailed from the Pennsylvania hills. Accordingly, all kinds of dialectically linguistic adventures greeted me at every turn. Was the proper phrase "all of you," "ya'll," or "you'uns"? Was it "soda," "pop," or "sody pop"?

In the interest of full disclosure, both of my parents were, in fact, refined speakers. They were not the problem. Going on vacation to the homes of relatives was when the adventures really began.

There was the time in Alabama, when we had to visit a sick relative at the Cat Lick Hospital. For hours, as a boy, I wondered what kind of treatments could possibly be given at that facility? I was actually afraid to go there with the family, as visions of hundreds of tongue-ready tabbys haunted my pre-teen imagination (and I was allergic to cats anyway). Imagine my surprise when I discovered that they were talking about a CATHOLIC hospital!

Then there was the time as a young man that I accompanied some Southern relatives down to Florida. Now, I'm a seafood lover in the extreme, and I was asking the family in the car whether they knew about any good places to eat in the beach town where we were going. The family raved about Winnikins being the best place on the beach for good food. As the miles clicked by, visions of a scrumptious Winnikins seafood dinner on a beachfront patio formed in my mind.

Then we pulled up in front of the Weenie King. The hot dogs were, indeed, out of this world. Unfortunately, Weenie King did not serve Oysters Rockefeller that day.

Do you doubt whether we have a dialect particular to Lakewood? OK, what about "yuh"? Words like "yuhgonna" and "yuhwanna" were commonly heard on Lakewood streets when I was a boy, and they still are today. How about the "cha" words? Phrases like "cancha?", "woodcha?", "coodcha?" and "gotcha!" still resonate through the streets of Lakewood. Using "tuh" for "to" is also common around these parts: "Wheryuh goan?" "Tuh thuh store."

Ah, the refined linguistics of Lakewood. And this does not even reflect on the all-too-common speaking errors, like the horribly overused words "like" and "ah." Example: "Are yuh, ah, like, goan tuh be there, like, ah, next, ah, like Saerduy?"

We'll save a discussion of "slang" words for another column. That should make for a a) ducky b) peachy keen c) neat-o column. Wouldn't that be (here it comes) AWESOME?

As a child, I had to spend quite a bit of time in speech therapy, due to multiple throat surgeries. I still have trouble with my "r's" and my "4's," even after teaching all those years. (Perhaps I would have done better east of the Cuyahoga, or even closer to "Bahston"- where the "r's" seem to be perpetually banned!)

Speech lessons helped me dump the extemporaneous expressions like "like" and "and ah" from my vocabulary, but it was my Pennsylvania grandmother who really got me thinking one day. She kept using big words around me. One day, I asked her why. She explained that with my speech difficulties, some people might look at me as being less than capable. With a big vocabulary, along with well-expressed diction, I would, one day, show folks that I was capable of anything, even with my speech issues.

And she was right. I did.