Poooooooop!

At the wedding reception Saturday my niece encountered a, perhaps, new problem - husband calling. Her new husband, like many men, does not have a name that lends itself to hollering across a loud room. Soft consonants, short final vowel, and usually spoken with falling pitch and/or volume. One plus is that it is two syllables. She did manage to get his attention but that may have been partly due to the fact that she was the one in the big white dress waving him over to us. Thinking that she could do better in the husband calling department I suggested she might want to try Granny's favorite.

At dinner parties, in the back yard, in department stores, or wherever my grandmother wanted to get my grandfather's attention and he was too far away for a discrete "Win, dear?" or "W.D.?" she would practically sing "Poop*" with a long high 'o' across the room. PawPaw hated it. Unfortunately, he never understood that as long it worked she would continue to use it.

Husband calling is a dying art but young wives may wish to practice up. I think Granny's "Poop" might have carried over a band in a nightclub.

Before you start to wonder why my grandmother was 'calling' my grandfather using a euphemism for feces, a nick name for Popeye was "Poop Deck Daddy". I don't know why she'd be using part of Popeye's nickname for a husband call.