Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Bag, bag, box, car, garage.

My parents were going camping with a bunch of my dad’s colleagues, and they were getting their stuff together.  They were bringing a handful of plastic bags and wanted to make sure they stayed dry, so they put the plastic bags in a plastic bag.  I wasn’t there for the conversation, but from what I was told, it went something like this:

What do you call a plastic bag that is made to hold plastic bags?

?

A plastic-plastic bag-bag

What about the box you just put the plastic bag full of plastic bags into?

Well, that would be a cardboard-plastic-plastic bag-bag-box.

My parents told this story at the dinner table and, when you add in a bunch of teenage Rossis, we had to take it to the level of absurdity.

Plastic bags, in a plastic bag, in a box, in a car sitting in the garage would be (dun-duh-dun)

A wood-metal-cardboard-plastic-plastic bag-bag-box-car-garage.

For the next 20 years, when a discussion got to the point of absurdity, someone would just say “bag-bag-box-car-garage” and we’d all burst out laughing.  Sometimes, we’d just blurt it out for no reason at all.

I thought of this because of something I stumbled upon while roaming the internet.  It’s an island in a lake, in an island in a lake, in an island in the ocean.  I looked on Google maps to make sure it wasn’t just a photoshopped joke, and it does exist.  Just search for Tanauan City in the Philippines, it’s just west of there.