Kimberlee K.

When I was a kid, my parents used to bowl in a Thursday night league at our local bowling alley.

We’d all head over as a family around 6:00pm, hoping we were early enough to get a spot in the small parking lot.

Whenever we pulled in, my sister and I would keep our eyes out for what we called the interesting car.

Forever defying the laws of physics, the interesting car had trinkets hanging from nearly every inch of it. It looked as if it had been abandoned in the woods for decades and the wilderness had begun to overtake it. Or like a safari jeep that had been covered in glue and driven off trail.

The interesting car was a landmark at the bowling alley. Something we looked for and pointed at, saying, “Look! It’s the interesting car!!”

Sometimes we’d walk around it, looking to see if anything new had been added to it. I still have no idea how it drove around—legally—and never left a trail of debris.

The other day, I was telling my mom a story about a truck, painted with a camo pattern, that parks outside my apartment building. It has netting running along the bed and some kind of metal installment on the roof.

“Picture the interesting car,” I said, adding context to the color and overall imposing nature of it.

My mom nodded, instantly understanding, and I smiled.

That adjective would work for a total of three maybe four people (I’m not sure if my brother was old enough to remember it). Anyone else would have said, “what?”

We all learn a language in our homes growing up. We all learn behaviors and patterns that, to us, simply seem normal, and we don’t discover otherwise until those things are put in front of someone who doesn’t know or understand them.

When my sister’s now husband first started hanging out with our family, he was quick to point out that my mom, sister, and I all tap on things when we point. Especially when we’re in the car.

“Look over there,” we’ll say, and then we’ll tap tap tap on the window with our fingernails.

None of us have ever realized we do this, or that there is any other way for it to be done.

“Do you want to sit here?” tap tap tap.

Not that long ago, my brother asked if we would be having roll ups on Christmas morning, or if he should pick up donuts on his way over. Roll ups, in our vernacular, are Pilsbury cinnamon rolls.

Just like “fishie crackers” are Goldfish, “kaloogis” are silly mistakes or airhead moments (what the world loved to call blonde moments in the early 2000s), and “special boxes” are storage bins where my siblings and I have collected sentimental things throughout our lives.

These are all things that make perfect sense to me but would make anyone outside my parents and siblings stop me mid conversation.

“What?” they’d ask.

“Sorry,“ I would say, realizing. “I forgot that was just us.”