There are a lot of completely stupid inside jokes that my husband and I have which are lingering remnants of our time in Japan. I'm guessing that they're funny to us because we know the references, but they'd just be idiotic to other people. Nonetheless, I will tell my readers that this package of Mr. Ito "Mr. Brown" cookies, besides representing double "mister" power (or revealing a secret origin to the creation of Mr. Mister), reminded us of one of those jokes.
A long time ago, in a life we lived very far away from California, we had an English textbook which talked about "Brown-san" (aka "Mr. Brown") in such a way that it very obviously alluded to poop. Sometimes, the people who write English texts for non-native speakers try to slide in a play on words so that the unsuspecting non-natives go around talking like they've learned from the Dirty Hungarian Phrasebook. References to "cutting cheese" in some texts were good examples of this. The way in which "Brown-san" was talked about in whatever book we used made it clear that this was a similar attempt to make a joke.
So, my husband and I go around sometimes talking about "Brown-san" in the same way that women who are coy about the topic of menstruation talk about Aunt Flo. We're not really shy or avoiding vulgarity (we can be as vulgar as the next sailor), but just messing about with our own little "we-used-to-teach-in-Japan" inside joke. And, now, there are these Japanese caramel chocolate chip cookies ostensibly made by "Mr. Brown" which made us both smirk.
No, we did not buy the cookies. There's just too much unsavory history with that name. ;-)
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