Code Word: Pickle

Sometime in the early 1980’s, when I was about 10 or 11, my mom’s attention turned towards the risk that her sweet, innocent and adorable children (yes I’m talking about me and my brother) could be abducted. I remember thinking this was something new, and I’m not entirely sure what motivated the newly heightened sense of stranger danger. I assume there was a rash of high-profile abductions (according to this article the United States was averaging 200-300 cases a year in the 1980’s), but I don’t really have anything to back that up. For all I know it was because she caught a particularly "special" after school special.

Somewhere along the way, maybe during that after school special, she heard an idea she liked – a secret password that we would use if someone tried to pick us unannounced. A word that  wanna be chauffer could pass along to my brother or me to signify that our parents had requested the said transportation.

The secret word? Pickles.

I have no idea why my mother picked the word “pickles” but, in retrospect, it was the perfect secret word. It’s not my mother’s maiden name, the name of our first pet or the city we live in. We didn’t have any particular affinity to pickles, in fact I don’t even LIKE pickles. We don’t work in the pickle industry, don’t make pickles, or even know how pickles are made (okay, this last one is a stretch. I’m sure my dad knows how pickles are made.) Our only connection with pickles is that they often appear on our lunch plates, next to a burger and order of fries.

Which may have been when mom picked the word – over lunch.

We never actually used the secret word. I believe that if my parents needed to send a friend to pick us up, they wouldn’t have passed along the secret word.  And, even if they passed along the word, I’m sure their flighty kids wouldn’t have asked for the secret word. Let’s face it, a system is only as good as the goof balls you’re trying to protect.

At a recent family gathering my brother (now almost 30) and I (pushing 35, thank you very much), talked about the secret word during a round of family reminiscences. My mom didn’t even remember the conversation – which, now that I’m a mother, I don’t find at all surprising. I’m lucky if I remember a conversation I had this weekend, never mind one I had 20 years ago) – but my brother and I still knew the secret word.

Pickles!

Now can you drive me home?