We live in a [glade], my [mother] and I. We live in a [house] that sits in a [forest]. And we live with my [father]. My mother and I are quiet [people], except when we [laugh]. Then we are [loud], and we go on and on. My father’s a [talker]. He has no [sense of humor]. He goes on and on but says very little.

My mother and I, we have our own [language]. We speak in [code]. [Lines] from old [movies], [Marx Brothers] [routines]. We quote them and laugh. My father stares like a [dog] at a [book]. I don’t get it, he says. What’s funny about that?

I found a [list] [online] the other day of what someone called “Mostly Forgettable Movie Quotes”. I remembered most of them. Number ten on the list comes from Steve Martin’s “The Jerk.”

In the [movie] Steve Martin’s a [carnival worker]. He guesses people’s [weight]. A man steps up from the [crowd] and asks, what do I win? Martin answers:

Anything in this general [area] right in here. Anything below the [stereo] and on this side of the [Bicentennial] [glasses]. Anything between the [ashtrays] and the [thimbles]. Anything in this three inches. Right in here, this area, that includes the [Chiclets] but not the [erasers].

What’s [funny] about this, we explain to my father, is the word “anything.” How quickly its turns into practically [nothing].

Someone thought it was “mostly forgettable”, but my mother and I actually quote this quite often. It is part of a [repertoire] we have, and we change it a bit to suit the [occasion]. Sometimes we say, but not the Chiclets.

My father and I do not have our own language. We do not speak in code, or share private [jokes]. He is one of those people who can take anything and turn it into practically nothing. He sounds as if he might [break] when he laughs.

My mother and I are already broken. From the [years] we have lived while he danced on our [backs]. Now we live in a glade, in a house in a forest and my mother and I laugh loud and long. After all this time. This is ours. This three inches. Including the Chiclets.

Including the Chiclets (personal)