UNCLE!!!!

Honestly, there are days when I just want to "say Uncle" and run for cover.

More like shout Uncle, and hide under the covers.

It's as though I forget that I am the adult in the house,

and let my toddler put me in an arm bar until I submit to his will.

Yesterday was just such a day, in part responsible for my absence online.

You probably don't want to know what I would have had to say last night...

But today, with some time to think, and this incredibly angelic face smiling cheerily at me all day,

giving the dutiful, "Yes, Mommy," whenever prompted, 

happily asking for seconds on his Herbalife shake,

and coming to me with his arms up asking for an "iss" (kiss), 

let's just say that I've regained some perspective and can look on the prior day's drama with a bit of humor.

As it happens, there is quite a bit of speculation as to the origin of 

the above cry of desperation.

You probably don't care to get online and do any research,

but since I was interested, I bet you are, too,

so let me summarize for you what Michael Quinion, of World Wide Words,

has for us on the subject of "say Uncle".

While some speculate that it comes from a Latin cry used by Roman children, there doesn't seem to be any explanation for why these ancient children needed help from their uncles in the first place...

Although I certainly cried uncle a few times while studying Latin,

I think there is a more interesting approach.

I wish, at this moment, that I was incredibly witty and could thereby craft an entertaining and lighthearted story for your amusement, revealing to you the long held secret of the first person to "say uncle".  I had a friend in elementary school who wrote a short story on the first person to "get the willies", and have secretly envied her skills in fiction for years now...

Alas, becoming a grown-up has placed even more limitations on my imagination, and all I can give you are the facts, such as Mr. Quinion describes them to be.

Apparently, our American idiom is actually drawn from a joke in a British periodical.

A young girl gives her uncle a parrot, promising that it's quite a verbal bird and will impress the uncle's friends. (In my opinion, if he needed a talking parrot to be impressive, perhaps he should have just spent his time becoming more interesting in his own right... but I digress).

One evening, with his friends, the man attempts, unsuccessfully, to get the bird to say, "Uncle," finally shouting at the uncooperative bird ,"Say UNCLE, say UNCLE," while wringing its neck and angrily throwing it into a pen with ten chickens.

Later, filled with remorse and guiltily approaching the pen to remove what he assumed would be the dead body of his niece's parrot, he was shocked to find nine dead chickens strewn about the pen, and the parrot standing over the remaining chicken, wringing its neck, shouting in monotone, "Say UNCLE, say UNCLE!"

...

So there you have it.

Who knew that the childish epithet shouted during arm wrestling matches could have such macabre origins?

And no, I did not say uncle. I finished the day, gave him a bath, and

"said bedtime".

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