“We say, ‘Cat Tang. Squirrel Tang. Bird Tang.'”

When I was a little girl, probably, like, four or five years old — um, I have a cassette tape of myself — an audio cassette, and I’m singing, and I’m making up songs off the top of my head. And one of the songs that I made up was called “Lion Tang.” T A N G. Lion Tang. And, I’m just singing like, “Oh, Lion Tang. Oh, Lion Tang.” And I clearly remember what I was thinking. I was thinking it meant lions fighting. It’s a song about lions having a fight. They’re having a tang, a lion tang. 

And so I told my husband this many, many, many years later about Lion Tang. And in my mind, it wasn’t just — you couldn’t — you didn’t just have to have a lion tang. I mean, it can be any animal having a fight. It’s called a Tang. And so now, so now we’ll — we look — when we look out the window and we see, like, squirrels fighting, or, like, birds fighting, or cats fighting, we say, “Cat Tang. Squirrel Tang. Bird Tang.”

And that’s our word for when we see two animals fighting. It’s called a Tang, which is a word I made up when I was like five or six years old. Yup. I think it — I think it, like, comes from, like, fang and tangle. I think that’s what — in my mind was, like — I was thinking about a tangle with fangs was tang. Yeah. Like, I really do remember what I was thinking when I said that. So — and that’s what I meant.