The last post elicited some great answers to the burning question: What is the true purpose of those little cardboard tubes you find inside paper towels and toilet paper?
Let's see. We've got people who, when they were children, used the tubes to make mazes for hamsters, kazoos, binoculars, kaleidoscopes, and pretend swords. Then we've got Grant, Kelly's husband, who Kelly says still uses the tubes as trumpets. We're getting warm!
But the true name of these cardboard tubes, as Aaron pointed out in the comments section, is ....
Doo da doos!
Yes. When we were little, our mom, teaching us how to make horn noises through the tubes so we could pretend that we were playing trumpets, told us that the cardboard tubes were actually called "doo da doos," a name that, to a 4-year-old's mind, sounds much like the noise you make when you play it like a horn: "Doo da dooooooo!"
All through my life, even into adulthood, I have referred to these as "doo da doos," and I never thought anything of it until I one day told Dan to "throw away that doo da doo," and he looked at me like I was crazy. So I converted him, and now he, too, refers to them as doo da doos.
So for the last few weeks, we've been collecting doo da doos, and tonight we took them to our church class to let them make decorated cardboard trumpets. And there must be something universal about the magic of a round piece of cardboard, because the minute we handed them to the kids, before we even told them what we were going to do with them, they put them up to their mouths and started making trumpet noises.
It made me laugh and feel homesick all at the same time.
Funny what a stupid little piece of cardboard can do.
Thanks for playing, y'all.