WHAT THE HECK IS "FUNCH" ???

Back before there was an Ananda school, before crazy4coens, I had three friends…Kelly, Cheryl, and Marianne. Kelly’s family had two beach houses that were a block from the Santa Cruz marina. The houses were black and pink. Kelly’s parents stayed in the black house and we stayed in the pink house.

If you wanted to go the famous Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk - Millions of Memories… There was a path that led through some oleanders to a railroad track. When you followed the track, you could cross the canyon that separated the beach houses from the Boardwalk by crossing a railroad bridge. It is this same bridge seen in the movie The Lost Boys.

Our time was fairly equally divided between flirting with the rich boys at the marina in the hope of getting to ride on the catamarans or sail boats. (That was where I saw Deck for the first time, crazy4coens. And hey… who names a kid “Deck”!) Or strolling the boardwalk and riding the rides. Sometimes we lay in the sun to tan. Mostly, we drank or smoked and stayed in the perpetual sate of baked while the oblivious parents played bridge and cribbage next door. We believed we were very grown up and wise. We were idiots. That’s how it goes.

One morning after a party, I woke up and looked for my shoes. Extra bodies littered the floor and picking my way through them was a challenge. I was trying not to wake anyone up. My shoes were a style called “deck shoes”. When I finally found them, someone had written on the white rubber sides of my soles along the outer edge “Rebecca Scuddles is Oodles of Funch!” in bright blue pen.

I was only mildly peeved. The shoes were not new. The longer I sat in the lawn chair and thought about it, the more I liked the weird little phrase, though I worried that it was some sort of slam. Was this person saying that I was too fat?

I never did find out who wrote it. But it became a thing for us to write it on whatever we could find… walls, in drain pipes, public bathrooms or in the rollercoaster car. We did this all the way home when we stopped for gas or to eat. It continued back home. “Rebecca scuddles is oodles of funch” was turning up all over town.

I got quite a kick out of finding it somewhere that I had not written it. Then I got sick. Very, very sick. The theory was that I’d picked up… trench mouth, mono and oh joy… hepatitis (not the sexually transmitted kind, thank you!) at the Boardwalk. The likely culprit was a public drinking fountain.

My shoes and I were out of commission. I tossed them under my bed and there they lay. I did not look under my bed very often. A half of a school year passed before I left public school. The shoes stayed under the bed. Then, when I enrolled at Ananda School, a year later, I re-found them. It was like finding old friends. I kicked off my stupid hiking boots that were so popular at that time and put the deck shoes on.

Someone at the school must have read the message on my feet. The staff had put sheets of butcher paper on the walls. We used this for making up classes. But we used it as a sort of message board/ graffiti center as well. So as I sat down with a cup of steaming coffee and a dough nut one morning. .. “Rebecca scuddles is oodles of funch” stared down on me.

I have never found out who put it there either. But it was sort of a welcome home sign for me. It made me belong, as stupid as that may sound. I was here and my mark was on that wall.

There was no way to know for sure what “oodles of funch” meant. I get the oodles. But what the heck is funch?

Eventually I decided to leave my message on dmarks Throwawayblog about Patrick. But leaving a message and making up my moniker of Ananda girl was not enough. I wanted a blog of my own. When I looked at the names of other people’s blogs via dmark’s links I saw clever and often witty things.

It did not take me long to come up with it. “Oodles of funch” popped right into my head. It was after all, my own personal phrase, attached to me specifically. Putting it on the blog felt right. Once done, the blog felt like home.

So what do you think “funch” might be? I’m open for suggestions. I have sort of dubbed it to mean “words”. But that may not be right. One of you may know a better definition. Well?