Angie Klink

Category: Testosterone Trenches

“Stop copying me!”
“Stop copying me!”

“I said, ‘Stop!’”
“I said, ‘Stop!’”

“Mo-om!”
“Mo-om!”

My boys have an ongoing “copying” fight. That’s where one boy repeats, parrot-like, every word of the other. Usually, it’s 4-year-old Ross copying 11-year-old Jack. Once the older son has had enough of his little brother’s annoying mimicking, he says a word he knows the little one can’t.

“Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!”

I taught Jack this Mary Poppins word back when he, himself, was a child of four.
Now, he uses it to torment his 4-year-old brother.

I was a major Mary Poppins fan when it hit the theaters in 1964. I was five and I played my Mary Poppins album on the turntable in our living room. I knew all the words to every Mary Poppins song, and I marched around our blond coffee table singing. I remember being quite proud when I could spout “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!”

During my boys’ most recent “copying” brawl, Jack said the “s” word, daring his little brother to reiterate. Ross fell silent for a beat, and then attempted to repeat the conglomerate of syllables. “Super-blah, blah, blah, blah!” he faked.

“You can’t copy me now, can you?” Jack taunted.

That’s when I decided it was time for my youngest offspring to undergo supercalifragilisticexpialidocious-training.

I whispered into Ross’s ear, “I’m going to teach you how to say it. Repeat after me.” And just as I had taught Jack so many years before, I sounded out the magical Disney-speak for Ross to replicate:

“Super”
“cali”
“fragil”
“istic”
“expi”
“ali”
“docious.”

“There. You said it!”

Ross smiled the grin of a boy who knew he would get his big brother and get him good. That’s when I realized that Ross had never seen the movie. He needed to be indoctrinated into the world of chimney sweeps and flying carousel horses. The next day I rented Mary Poppins.

It all came together when Ross watched the movie. He understood where his brother had gotten this mysterious expression. And I had the opportunity to once again sing along and relive my kindergarten days.

The next morning Ross crawled into my bed. I was semi-conscious, but with one squinting eye, I saw Ross, the covers pulled nearly to his button nose, staring at my bedroom ceiling. He began to practice.

“Super…cali…lipstick…expialadocious.”

Throughout the day, Jack led Ross in perfecting his pronunciation. I dug out my old Mary Poppins book. I read the cover: “Walt Disney’s Mary Poppins. She’s Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious*!” What was that asterisks? When I was little, the asterisks went unnoticed, over my head.

I read the words at the corresponding asterisks in the lower corner. “*Practically perfect in every way.”

I knew, with her magical measuring tape, Mary “measured up” practically perfect in every way. But I had no idea that was also the definition of our “stop copying me” word of the week. As Oprah would say, my realization was a defining moment.

It felt good to know that the word was not just a silly mouth full of syllables. It had a purpose, a meaning. A meaning that floated up from my past and landed like Mary and her parrot umbrella in the middle of my present day family life.

For no matter how irritating my boys’ “stop copying me” fights are, they boil down to normal, healthy kid stuff. Stuff that becomes a fond memory later in the game, when they’re grown and thinking back on the days when they playfully loved to get under each other’s skin—which, in the big picture, is supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.