The other morning I was driving to work when I noticed one of my headlights was out. I immediately thought, "pedittle!!!". I pedittled myself! Heehee.For the unitiated, the word pedittle is defined as a car with only one working headlight. Also . . . padoodle , padungle, perdiddle, kadiddle or paddidle; I guess it depends on where you're from.
This made me think back to when me and my sister were little riding with Mom in the car. A game we used to play was looking for pedittles. Whoever of us called the pedittle first got to punch the other person (playfully of course **snicker*). I never heard anybody else play this game so I always thought it was something our mom made up to keep us amused on car ride.
That is until hubby and were out and about driving around and all of a sudden he cried out, "pedittle!!!". My hunny pedittled!
Okay, so now I got to thinking about the where, how and what of this cute but unusual word . . . pedittle. I wasn't able to find an origin to the word but I found out lots about different variations on the game.
A common version of this game is to shout pedittle then punch to roof of the car. Or if you're on a date if the guys shouts pedittle then he gets to kiss his girl or if she calls the pedittle she gets to slap her fella . . . who makes this stuff up??
Unbeknownst to me there is a driver's handicap. Since the driver has to focus on, you know, driving if the driver sees a pedittle in the rear window only he (or she) can call it; the passengers can't.
And then who know that there was a strip version of this game?? According to Cha Cha, the person/people who didn't say padiddle must remove one article of clothing.
Another variation the game is extended to cars with only one working rear light, on sight of which the word pedunk is shouted.
And then it seems that some people have put way too much thought into the game. I found someone who had a scoring system.
Car Padiddle - 1 point
Semi-truck Padiddle - 2 points
VW Bug Padiddle - 3 points
Taxi Padiddle - 5 points
Farm Equipment Padiddle - 5 points
Boat Padiddle - 5 points
Train Padiddle - 10 points
Helicopter Padiddle - 15 points
School Bus Padiddle - 20 points
Police Padiddle - 25 points
Airplane Padiddle - 100 points
Anyhoo . . . I learned way more about pedittling than I ever thought possible. Who knew?
Oh by the way, hunny, you need to replace my headlight.
That's funny- we used to "padiddle" (w/shoulder punch) when I was a kid, so it was in use around here ~50 yrs. ago.
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