Thursday, February 21, 2013

The Art of English

John's command of the English language cracks me up on a daily basis. He often searches for the right word/phrase and comes up just shy. Here are a few examples:
"Will you play tic-tac-two with me?"
"Why you use that chowder on your face?"
"I got fruit by the toe!" (Fruit by the Foot)
"Mom, I saw seven o'clock on my temperature."

He also has this way of talking about things that happened hours earlier as if they happened years ago.
"Mom, [re]member that time we went to my school for the ice cream social?"
"Last night?"
"Yeah. That was fun."

"Member when we ate that circle food?"
"Circle food?"
"Yeah, the one with the crab in it?"
After some thought, "You mean the sushi we ate for dinner yesterday?"
"Yeah. I like shooshi. Can we have it again for lunch?"

Sometimes we are at a loss as to what John is trying to tell us. I have learned to search for clues in his thinking patterns to figure out what the object or idea is that he can't quite name. Recently he was trying to tell me about "the thing that takes cars up into the sky" and I was completely stumped. Crane? Tow truck? Hot air balloon? Alien spacecraft? 50 guesses later he proudly announced, "Oh yeah. A tornado." Huh.

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