The macken, or, mothering via memory, or, welcome to the crazy in my head. Pull up a chair; we're about to eat!

The only time I ever knew the word macken it wasn't macken, it was mackin'. That's a certain time-and-place kind of phrase that might not mean anything to anybody, a speck of the microcosmic fiber of adolescence in Western New York in the early '90s.

If someone was mackin' on you, he probably drank loganberry juice and he certainly would walk behind the Super Duper to buy you a slice of Trusello's pizza with the cheese under the sauce and he absolutely thought you were cute. You pegged your jeans and he wore a jean jacket and maybe he'd ask if you were going to Canada on Saturday night, because Canada was no further than his house but a lot more fun. Or maybe he'd suggest Duck Island or a walk around the Wintergarden, because if he was mackin' on you, you couldn't be anywhere but in Niagara Falls, circa 1992.

Or so I think. Did the cute boys mack on you where you lived?

We never ate Taco Bell because we always ate Mighty Taco and I don't think I knew about Dunkin' Donuts but that's because we had Frankie's Donuts and we we never said flirting because we always said mackin'. Did I really see him mackin' on you at Deveaux field by the picnic table?

E was talking yesterday in one of those endless soliloquies for which I'm not really a relevant audience member and I'm not generally called on to participate, although my presence is not entirely optional, either. So I was washing dishes and making tea and pureeing baby food and dispensing it into ice cube trays to freeze when she started narrating about a boy at school and his mackin'

and suddenly I started listening, because did I need to remind you that she is still just four but I have not been fifteen for a very long time?

There was talk of the boy, and his mackin', and the boy's mackin': it was good. And she wanted some more mackin' and could I talk to the boy or his mommy to learn about his mackin'?

A Life Lesson for My Daughters: 
If you need to question a boy's mommy about his mackin', he's not doing it very well.

Except, this was really about the tea I was making (not mackin') because Mommy, don't you need boiling water for mackin'? and I am wondering which boy at school is this? and is he kinky? and what investigative questions do I need to ask of her now, exactly?

Have you figured it out, yet? because my past was clouding my logic and I was not very fast to figure it out.

She wasn't really saying mackin', of course, because she was saying macken.

I mean, obviously.

And the macken, that's really mac'n'.

Her friend in school had mac'n'cheese with no cheese.

He just had mac'n'.

She wanted some nude noodles, and that I can accomodate.