The Slice: The best of us get our ‘merds wixed’

Slice readers told about moments of misspeaking that lived on as family favorites.

“When our now 7-year-old daughter, Bailey, was 2, she said ‘huggleberries’ instead of ‘huckleberries,’ ” wrote Gwendolyn Warnica. “We still call them that.”

Heather Seman’s husband, Tony, is a mountain climber. So maybe it was inevitable that their sons, Aedan and Kyle, would grow up referring to a certain pair of movies as “Pirates of the Carabiner I” and “Pirates of the Carabiner II.”

Donnalee Herrington’s husband, Paul, was setting up the family’s gas camping stove and meant to ask where the fire starter had been hidden. But what came out of his mouth was “star farter.”

“The four boys quickly picked up on what he had said and it was a ‘star farter’ from then on.”

Hattie Small’s daughter thought the expression was “Taking it for granite.”

Thanks to the creative wording of a little girl in her daycare program, Diane Gronning refers to a futon as a “crouton.”

The Rev. Bill Peterson was leading a group of fifth-graders in a church confirmation class when one of the girls said of a wise-beyond-her-years classmate, “Jessica, you’re so thinkative.”

He noted, “That word has gotten a lot of mileage in the Peterson household.”

Mildred Scheel’s nephew once misspoke when alluding to “hand-me-downs.” That’s why some in her extended family take delight in saying “handy downs.”

And thanks to something her dad said in a moment of confusion long ago, those in Carol Polser’s family have been known to explain unintentional language jumbling by saying, “I got my merds wixed.”

Today’s Slice question: What percentage of those receiving family-snapshot Christmas cards critique the appearance of the people in the picture in a way that they wouldn’t want the senders to hear?