on words

My youngest son has had, for most of his 9 years, a gift for butchering the English language. The first word he ever said was "tree", he said it "free", and so it began. Trucks were frucks, motorcycles were a group of sounds I hope I am never able to make, oatmeal was oatmore. The list is long.

Even as he got older he refused to say things correctly, no matter how much correcting I did. I'll admit, he's my youngest it was cute. I would correct him, but it never took. Not only does he mispronounce everything, he refers to most things, at least once as "You know, that thing". Clearly if it isn't overly important to him it gets shuffled to the back.

We have had many an early morning arguement over the mint muffin and ENGLISH muffin debate. A mint muffin (you need to say mint with emphasis) is a sausage egg and cheese sand, like a mc muffin. Which is what the rest of us call it. An ENGLISH (again said more loud than emphatic) muffin is just that.

Last night the 2 of us stopped for dinner on the way to a football game. He was telling me about the dinner he and his brothers and husband went to a few months ago. It was funny because they told the waitress it was middle son's b day and got a free dessert. (survival skills my friends) He proceeded to inform me that the guys, "you know the guys who work there".

"Waiters" I interrupted

"Yeah them, anyway the guys who work there brought out the bong and everything"

So I froze, pretneded not to hear, and prayed no one around me did either.

"The what?" I said

You know the thing they hit (I swear I almost choked when he said that) with the big stick.

He proceeded to demonstrate how to hit a "bong"

Only he meant a GONG.