Complaining Turkey!

I just saw the word grouse in an article that I had to read for my English class.

For those of you who don't know, Grouse means to grumble, or complain.

It can also mean a small, chicken-like game bird.

In HS, as a junior, I was one of the lucky students to recieve Mr. Det as an English teacher. My friend Marie was one as well. We were in just about every class together for the last three years of HS, which is probably why I miss competing with her for the top grade to this day. But Mr. Det used to give these vocab quizzes every other Friday. Every test we had to know not only the new words, but the old words from all the past quizzes.

So, sitting in Mod Hist on day when we should have been doing the Fladwork, we were studying for the vocab tests. And we got to the word grouse. Well, to make a long story short, we ended up remembering Grouse by holding our hands up with fingers spread out, and wiggling our thumbs. If you remember back to Elementary school, I'll bet that most of you had to trace your hands around Thanksgiving to make turkeys.

That was what we did. So whenever either of us see the word Grouse, we immediately think... complaining turkeys! Plus, we both do the hand sign. Childish, I know, but I will most likely never forget what Grouse means!

The joy of neumonic devices! Needless to say, we both always aced those tests!

Katherine