Friday is Doonerism Spay…. I Mean “Spoonerism Day”

Friday is Spoonerism Day, a day commemorating Reverend William Archibald Spooner and his frequent verbal slip-ups. Reverend Spooner was a professor at Oxford University in England.  While he often found himself speaking in front of his students and his congregation, he became very famous for mixing up words.  Spooner committed one of his most famous mistakes while officiating a wedding.  After pronouncing the couple husband and wife, he said to the man, “It is now kisstomary to cuss the bride.”  Of course Spooner meant to say, “It is now customary to kiss the bride.”  Poor Reverend Spooner was so prone to speaking such silliness that his name was used for these mistakes. Other phrases attributed to Rev. Spooner (try to guess his actual thought):  The Lord is a shoving leopard, Is the bean dizzy, You hissed my mystery lecture, and Three cheers for our queer old dean.  Thanks to Reverend Spooner, the word spoonerism entered the English dictionary.

In high school I realized that spoonerism was one of my talents when I read “Prinderella and the Cince”   All the years mistakenly flipping my letters suddenly made sense.  “Prinderella and the Cince” became my claim to fame.  I would spout it when babysitting, at parties, teaching Sunday School and I even told the story during a talent show on a cruise ship.   In the spirit of Spoonerism Day I want to share the story.   Memorize it and astound your friends, relatives and small children!

Prinderella and the Cince

Tonce upon a ime there was a gritty little pearl named Prinderella. She lived with her two sugly isters and her sticked wepmother, who made her pine all the shots and shans and do all the other wirty durk.  Wasn’t that a shirty dame.
One day the Ping issued a Krocklamation that all the gelible irls should go to a Drancy fess ball.   Princerella’s sticked wepmother and susly isters could go, but Prinderella didn’t have a drancy fess, just rirty dags that fidn’t dit.  Wasn’t that a shirty dame.      Prinderella’s gairy fodmother appeared and changed the hice into morses, cumpkin into a poach and Prinderella’s rirty dags into a drancy fess.   Prinderella’s gairy fodmother told her to be home by the moke of stridnight. 
So, Prinderella bent to the wall and pranced all night with the Cince.  At the moke of stridnight she ran down the stalace peps and on the bottom pep she slopped her dripper; which was, of course, another shirty dame.
The next day, the Ping issued another Kroclamation, stating that all geligable irls sly on the tripper.   Prinderella’s sulgy isters slied on the tripper but it fidn’t dit.  Prinderella slied on the tripper and it fid dit.   So, Princerella and the Cince mot garried and and hived lappily ever after.

Doesn’t this story just bring ears to your ties?