Better Off Left Unsaid

I received this e-mail from my stepbrother Sam yesterday.

“Remember how you always used to say 'you deserve a winky button and a cardboard cookie', whenever you wanted to suggest someone had made a trivial contribution to the conversation? Well there's a word for that -- floccinaucinihilipilification. Cool, eh?”

Yes, like the Fonz, Arnold, Mel Allen and Flo, I had a catch phrase. Thank you Sam for reminding me even though I’m pretty sure I forgot on purpose. Thing is you forgot the exclamation of “Congratulations!” before the rest of the catch phrase. So the whole phrase was: “Congratulations! You deserve a winky button and a cardboard cookie.” With or without the exclamation, it still wasn’t the best of catch phrase. In fact it was awful. Like most catch phrases they never really start off as catch phrases. It was just something I said and then it caught on with the family. Thing is I have no idea where the phrase originated. Is it a combination of pop culture references or just my own nerdy creation? Either way it had the life span of Small Wonder and was just as quickly forgotten, or so I thought. Thanks Sam for reminding me…I guess.