Day 107: Stupid Family Things

We were talking about cooking the giblets of a turkey today, when Zack asked, "What parts of the turkey make up the giblets?"

I rattled off the list with great confidence.

"Well, let's see.  There's the heart, the liver, the gizzard, the neck and the tweedler."

"THE WHAT?" Zack asked with great merriment in his voice.

"The tweedler. . . you know, the tail of the turkey," I said.

To which both Mike and Zack died laughing. 

Zack:  "Mom, I'm pretty sure that word is made up."

Me:  "No it's not.  It's a real word.  Unless my mom was jacking with me and never got around to telling me it was a made up word. And now I'm 50 and still saying it."  (I'm laughing pretty hard at this point too.)

Then I had a great idea.  I called my dad, put him on speaker phone and said, "Dad, what's a tweedler?"  To which he replied, "It's the southern end of a north bound turkey.  A turkey tail.  Why?"

So apparently, my whole entire extended family believes that a tweedler is a turkey tail.  But no one else outside of my family has ever heard the word (at least not in relation to a turkey's tail!)

All that to say, I feel foolish.  I'm glad I never said that word to anyone else.  Well . . . until now . . .