Last week, my wife, sister, and sister-in-law had a “girls night” where they got to enjoy a pretty rad evening. The trio went out to dinner and then attended “Wicked,” the wildly popular Broadway play that just wrapped up a three-week run in Spokane.

My sister, wife, and sister-in-law had a great time at “Wicked” last week.

Throughout the night, the ladies would text our family group message with updates on how the evening was going. My mom and us men would text back.

The name of the play was too good not to take advantage of in our texts.

As we went back and forth, a certain theme started to develop…

On Tuesday night, we were all taking liberty with the name of the play.

As you can probably tell, we all had fun with the name of the play in our discussion. In fact, it wasn’t just confined to the group thread on the night of the play. It has now developed into an inside joke within our family. Throughout the weekend and at our Sunday family dinner last night, “wicked” was used more times than one would expect to hear over a couple drinks in a Boston bar. Now, admittedly, there was one person who was probably letting the word slip from his lips the most and he might be the author of this blog.

Do you have someone in your family or circle of friends who annoyingly drops a word, phrase, or modifier over and over to the point of exhaustion? Although I may have been the culprit with the word wicked long after the play was over, Sidney and I both have examples of the patriarchs of our own families doing the same thing.

My dad thought he was hilarious by adding “Mc” before everything when the topic was McDonalds (i.e. Okay, let’s not make a Mc-stake by ordering a Shamrock Mc-shake.). Because my sister worked at McDonalds in high school, the restaurant was brought up a lot in our house. That of course opened it up for my father to make terrible dad Mc-jokes before the term “dad joke” was even a thing. It was so awful.

Sidney revealed to me that her dad would attach the word “jack” at the end of everything when she was growing up (i.e. Hey Sidney-Jack, do you want to go order get a soda-Jack?). I mean, I guess he could have chosen worse endings?

Sometimes the repetition of a word is used to make someone laugh. Or to annoy. Or it is used so much out of habit that the person doesn’t even realize they are using it so mindlessly. You might know a friend or two that uses a certain four-letter word in such a way.

If you know someone who has a wicked affinity for using a certain word or if your family has embraced a certain word or phrase, please let me know. Hope everyone had a great start to their week. Don’t Blink.