Hideous kinky!

Another entry in my "Life is Weird" file. This morning, I was drinking a cappuccino while the boys were doing what it is they do. My four-year-old was playing with a cat toy on the floor, chattering to himself, and suddenly said, "Hideous kinky! Hideous kinky!"
HUH?
"Hideous Kinky" is a good book written by Esther Freud. Semi-autobiographical, it tells the story of two very young sisters, Bea & Lucy, who are taken by their hippie Mom to Morocco as she searches for meaning in life. It takes place in the 1960's. The Mom is exploring Sufism and following a man; the girls are normal little people who quickly find the adventure tiresome, and simply want a stable life that includes school. The title refers to two random words the sisters hear somewhere along the line. They like the sound of both words, especially put together, and "hideous kinky" becomes their sisterly code to mean nothing and everything, as well as some English they can shout out in a foreign environment when they probably just don't know what to say.

I read "Hideous Kinky" several years ago, and can recommend it. There's also a movie that's well done (follows the book), starring the beautiful Kate Winslet. The book has yet to be unpacked in this house, so is still in a box somewhere, and my son doesn't watch TV, only Spidey & Brady Bunch dvds, so I'm left really wondering why he said, "Hideous kinky!" and where he picked it up. It's things like this that make me feel like a sociologist in my own home. Maybe young English-speaking children are tapped into some universal language development brainfeed, and "hideous kinky" is one of the entries. Or maybe he learned it from Kevin.