What A Pile Of Blarbleskutch

(It’s nearing the end of the year and we’ve already finished our finals and have nothing left to do. We have about a week to go that’s mostly half days, so instead of doing classwork, we get to goof off for a bit. On this particular day, the teacher has allowed us to use the whiteboard to have a hangman tournament. Our team is getting frustrated because the other two teams keep easily guessing our words, even when we used big ones like “octogenarian” and “antidisestablishmentarianism.” It’s my turn to pick a word and, fed up, we decide to use “Scrabble” rules for our next word. Since the word is made up, they’re understandably stumped by it.)

Classmate #1: “Is there a ‘Y?'”

Me: “Nope.”

Classmate #2: “Is there a ‘Q?'”

Me: “Nope.”

Classmate #3: “Is this even a word?”

(The rest of the class gets suspicious when my team simultaneously bursts out laughing.)

Me: “Yes. Keep guessing.”

Classmate #3: “Okay… ‘P?'”

Me: “Wrong. Hangman! You lose! We win a point!”

Classmate #4: “Okay, so what the heck is that word?”

Me: “Blarbleskutch!”

(I fill out the rest of the word while they all stare at me, stupefied.)

Classmate #2: “That’s cheating! That’s not a real word!”

Me: “Yes, it is.”

Teacher: “I’ll only let you count that as a word if you can tell me a viable definition for it…”

Me: *without skipping a beat* “It’s the sound a fish makes when you take it out of water. Duh!”

(I’m surprised to announce that the teacher still let us count that as a win and even more surprised that we came in the next day to find a fish drawn on the board with the word “blarbleskutch” in a word balloon.)