Missy Andrade, from Lafayette, says she first heard the term "padookie" when she was in the sixth grade and met a group of dancers from New Iberia who joined her Lafayette dance studio.
"Britney Sonnier asked me one day if I had a padookie," Andrade said.
Over the years, whenever Andrade heard the word again, she’d ask, "Where are you from?"
In New Iberia, the original padookies were these figure-8 shaped ponytail holders.
The answer was always the same: New Iberia.
Earlier this year, Andrade asked a co-worker if she had a ponytail holder. The co-worker’s blank stare prompted her to say, "Hold up — you’re from New Iberia. What do you call it?"
The answer: "Padookie."
"It got me thinking, where does that term come from?" Andrade said. "It's not a Cajun French word. Why is it only isolated to the boundaries of New Iberia? Where did it come from, and why did it stick?"
A regional riddle
The question sparked what may be the most elaborate game of telephone in Curious Louisiana history — with more than 17 people in the chain of calls. Each conversation provided at least one more detail and the name of another woman who went to Mt. Carmel Academy in New Iberia with a critical piece of padookie information.
It also required multiple points of clarification.
First, Mt. Carmel Academy was a Catholic girls' school that operated in New Iberia from 1870 until 1988. It was run by nuns of the Congregation of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. Many of its tight-knit group of alumni remain in close touch, and the school plays a critical role in the world of padookie lore.
Secondly, many in St. Martin Parish and some in Vermilion Parish also use the term padookie to refer to ponytail holders.
Third, depending on the generation, padookie could refer to only the double loops of elastic string, each having a round bead that overlapped the other to secure hair. There is a general consensus that, originally, "padookie" only referred to those types of ponytail bands. However, in the 60+ years of documented usage of the term, many now use it as a catch-all term for any ponytail holder.
Most people who use the term admit they have no idea where it came from. It’s simply what they’ve always called ponytail holders — and they’ll fight for its place in the lexicon.
Generational endurance
Joy Blanchard, who teaches education at LSU, sits firmly in the St. Martinville padookie camp.
Now 47, Blanchard remembers hearing the word "padookie" sleeping over at a friend's house, but she also remembered her mother using the word. Her mother, Rita Blanchard, is 84.
"It is padookie, and that's the only word I ever heard, but I don't know where it comes from," said Rita Blanchard. "My oldest daughter was born in '63, and when her hair was long, we made a ponytail and used a padookie."
That said, Susan Latiolais Tauzin, who is 79 and grew up on the levee in Catahoula in St. Martin Parish, said she only used the word "padookie" as a word to replace "thingamajig."
"It's kind of a nonsense word. In my circle, it represented something silly," Tauzin said. "I've never seen it used specifically. It was a catch-all jar."
A cousin from Lake Providence
One theory holds that the word was brought to the deMahy family home in the summer of 1966 by a cousin named Beth, who was from Lake Providence — she told a group of fellow 12-year-old girls that the elastic hair ties with beads were called "padookies."
Carmen deMahy Nicholson and her sister, Marie deMahy Rathe, have no clear memory of the incident.
"But then I don't remember some things that happened last week," Nicholson joked. "But I was gone and already married in the summer of '66. I don't know where it came from, but I do know that padookies were the ones with the balls."
The cousin from Lake Providence appears to be Beth Howington Malone, now living in Reno, Nevada. She did spend weeks with her deMahy cousins in the summer of 1966 and was 12 years old at the time.
At first blush, Malone had no recollection of the word "padookie," but she wondered if her younger sister Katherine Sandifer, now living in Florida, would remember.
"I had to be reminded of what we called them, but now it's coming back," Sandifer said. "Beth is six years older than me. I was only 6 years old that summer. She was 12. I called it whatever my older sisters called it."
Curious, Sandifer called other cousins in Lake Providence to ask if they remembered the word. At least one cousin was still very familiar with the term.
"As an adult, I had short hair from college to now," Sandifer said. "As I'm wearing my hair longer. I was saying the other day, 'What are these things called?' Now, it will be a padookie. It will regain its name."
The Padookie capital of the world?
Katy Shae Svendson, who grew up in New Iberia and went to Mt. Carmel with some of the deMahy girls, only knows ponytail holders to be called padookies.
"I have one on right now," Svendson said. "First, they were like the ones shaped like a number 8, a hair tie. That's what I called padookies."
These days, she calls all hair ties and ponytail holders padookies.
And how long has she called them that?
"Sixty-four years," Svendson said. "Ever since I met one. Maybe New Iberia is the padookie capital of the world."
She even wondered if the word could have some African or Caribbean origins and suggested calling her friend, Becky Owens.
Owens is an anthropologist who also went to Mt. Carmel.
"Supposedly, it started in New Iberia," Owens said. "You should call Phyllis Mata. She seems to know a lot about it. It may have gotten started in her class at Mt. Carmel."
Mata has written a tribute to Mt. Carmel published in The Daily Iberian, in which she mentions three 1970 graduates of the school who had a spend-the-night party in the home of Courtney Viator Louvier. The other two girls were Annette Viator Clifford and Mary Beth Bourgeois. Other girls in attendance were Tere Ramos Thomas, Suzette Buford Armentor, Sally Molbert Angers and Bonnie Ferguson Segura.
"They were sitting on the floor reading album covers and eating macaroni and cheese and listening to Otis Redding with rollers in their hair when Courtney asked one of the girls to hand her something, but instead of calling it a whatchamacalit, she called it ...," Mata writes.
The girls, according to Mata, went to school Monday morning and were visiting with other friends. The group was known for inventing words and somehow assigned the word "padookie" to the figure-8 shaped hair tie.
"It spread like wildfire through the hallowed halls of Mt. Carmel and way beyond," Mata writes, adding that she doesn't know anyone from the area who doesn't use the word.
Multiple friends who were a part of the group remember the incident and attribute the word padookie to either Louvier or Clifford, but did not want to be quoted in the article.
Louvier now lives in Chicago and Clifford in Georgia. Neither was available for comment on the padookie incident.
A celebration of quirk
New Iberia artist Paul Schexnayder has painted multiple pieces as an ode to the New Iberia padookie, and for a while, he sold a T-shirt that simply read, "PADOOKIE: It's a New Iberia thing."
Clai Rice, associate professor at University of Louisiana-Lafayette, focuses some of his research on contemporary theories of linguistics. Rice says perhaps part of the reason the word "padookie" has stayed local and has had staying power is its orientation in usage toward kid or teenage culture.
"We know when you learn your own home language, you don't really know that there's something unusual about it until you can travel away or other people come and visit you. So if you have a kids' word, then it stays really local," Rice said.
Secondly, he noted that the word itself is simply an interesting word — it has a good rhythm to it and has the word "dookie" in it.
"That creates some staying power," Rice said.
In raising the question of padookie, Andrade in Lafayette said she was a history major.
"Whether we realize it or not, we are very connected by the quirks of our culture," she said. "In many ways, south Louisiana likes to celebrate those quirks as opposed to trying to assimilate."
Padookie, it seems, is a grand celebration of just that.