It's Not Stupid, It's Advaaaaanced

Quote from Invader Zim, my absolute favorite cartoon (Zim is even better than Spongebob, which is saying a lot). I've been thinking about things I say incorrectly on purpose; one day, I'm going to say them wrongly out of habit, in front of someone who's not in on the joke, and make myself seem stupid. But I'm not stupid, I'm advaaaaanced.

One thing most people will recognize is the word for things that are delicate and breakable. Thanks to the brilliance of Darren McGavin's portrayal of Mr. Parker in A Christmas Story, I can never say it any other way than "fra-jee-lay". I haven't said "fraj-ull" in years. Recently, when packing up stuff to move into storage, I was writing 'fragile' on the outside of various boxes, and each time I'd sound it out: fra-jee-lay. Which of course I had to write on all the boxes because if something got broken the shards might be sharp and someone might PUT THEIR EYE OUT.

Over a year ago, I went to get my oil changed at the local Jiffy Lube; Alan went with me. There were a couple of other people in the waiting room when one of the Jiffy Lubers came in with some keys and yelled, "Who got the [mumble] bearin'?" It sounded more like LeBaron than anything but none of the customers had a LeBaron so we were all looking around at each other in confusion. He repeated himself, "The [mumble]-bearin? Somebody drives a [something]-bearin'?" I realized that my car, a convertible Sebring, had been pulled around outside, so I got up to see if he had my keys. It was indeed my car to which he was referring and he repeated his word several times as he rang me up and I paid. As it turns out, what he was saying was "SEE-barin(g)". He said it like "seafaring" but with a B instead of an F - accent on the first syllable and drawn-out long E: SEE-baring. Afterward, Alan and I talked about how funny it was that nobody knew whose car he meant; from there it started as a joke reference but now we say "See-baring" all the time. "Let's take the See-baring; I need to get gas." Someone is going to overhear us and think, "Those poor stupid people!"

The best deliberate mispronounciation story isn't my own, but it's become such a part of my vernacular as well as that of many friends and family. It involves Cheryl's grandfather Mr. Hubert, who one day years ago happened to be walking along the square in downtown Lawrenceville with one of his friends and Cheryl's brother Chip (to whom we owe a debt for this story). There had been recent attempts made to beautify the town square, improve the landscaping, add some little parks, that kind of thing. Some of these efforts met with the elderly gentlemen's approval while others did not. An object of scorn for Mr. Hubert's friend was a pretty little summerhouse that had been placed in a little park near the courthouse. He thought it was useless, he didn't see what good it was, and "What the hell is that thing, anyway?!?" To which Mr. Hubert replied, "It's a gazey-boo, you idiot!" Like Chip says, it's the "you idiot" that really makes that story. Try as I might, I can't refer to it as a gah-zee-bo. It's a gazey-boo, you idiot. When we were looking at wedding venues, many of which offered gazey-boos as Special Added Bonus Features, we just told the story and got the explanation out of the way, because we knew that sooner or later, "gazey-boo" was coming out of someone's mouth.

I have others, which I may have mentioned before but the origin isn't nearly as funny. For example, common Georgia roadkill is a 'ponnus', not a 'possum', simply because that's how I managed to say the word when I was a child; it's just stuck in my family's vocabulary. What about you - are there things you say wrongly on purpose? Is there a story behind why?