The URIs

I remember it like it was yesterday...I had that stack of Tahiti guide books on the table on the deck while we were having dinner one evening in early May.  One of them helpfully provided pronunciations for the islands we'd be visiting. Discovering we'd been saying them all wrong, we went over them together, carefully enunciating each syllable, willing them to stick in our minds.

And that's when it happened; I moved on to pointing out the various island groupings - the Tuamotus, the Marquesas, and the Society Islands, further divided into the windward Society Islands and the leeward Society Islands.  Meanwhile, G was still working on those pronunciations and, as he said them, over and over again, not really listening (I thought) to what I was saying, some of them started sounding like sneezes...

Who-aaaaaaaahhhhhhh- HEEEN-ee

Rye-aaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh-TAY-a

Mo-oooooohhhhhhhh-RAY-a

....or hacking coughs

Ran-gggggeeeeeee-ROW-a

Nu-kkkkkkuuuuuuuuu-HEE-va

Ta-HHHHEEEEEE-tee
Ta-HHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAA-a

He was having entirely too much fun with that silliness, and I implored him to please PAY ATTENTION to my lesson. He defended himself; he WAS paying attention, and, in fact had come up with a new island grouping of his own, dubbing the above seven islands the "Upper Respiratory Islands", or URIs for short (which sent my dinner spraying across the table). And that is how we've collectively referred to them ever since. Only Bora Bora escaped untarnished, and will forever after be known in our house as the "Healthy Island". 

As we've planned and anticipated our French Polynesian cruise in the subsequent several months, G's further expanded the shorthand for our discussions. The Pacific Princess is now the PP; Papeete is PPT, Tahiti is Hiti, and the whole trip is no longer "going to Tahiti" but instead "goin' ta Hiti".  

That's my guy!!  After all these years, I can still count on him for my daily giggle.