Yes, I am aware that it’s not Tuesday. It’s been sort of a long weekend, as my last post explained. Today Amelia Earhart and Gertrude Bell were back in school and I took a minute to catch up. I actually did a bunch of things on my New Year’s Resolution list- The Little Explorers and I went over our memory Bible verse on the way to school, I helped Arthur Dent put together his birthday Legos, and I squeezed in a workout, even with Laura Ingalls Wilder’s short naps today. And, I’m going to pretend I’m not 24 hours behind and riff on today’s theme of “words.”
1. Arthur Dent says this thing I really don’t understand. After he’s said “Pleeeeease, Mama!” and begged for a while, then says, “Pretty please!” and finally, when he’s exhausted all his options, he starts saying, “Pretty Butter Please!” I have no idea where it came from, and, honestly, it isn’t inclined to work for him, although it is cute.
2. Have you ever heard of a Mondagreen? If you think you haven’t, you just don’t know what it is. Apparently, it’s the term for a misheard song lyric. It’s from some old Scottish song whose lyrics said, “…and laid him on the green” but many people misheard as “Lady Mondagreen.” Ah, the things we learn from NPR! What is your Mondagreen? Mine is from that song, “Big Old Jet Airliner.” I always thought it said, “We Gonna Leave the Light On!” My little brother thought the song “Under the Boardwalk” was “Under the Aardvark.” Granted, he was probably about six, but I still think it’s my favorite Mondagreen.
3. We have a saying or poem in our house, “You can close the door/when you're four.” It’s basically our measure of when they’re old enough for a little privacy without getting into too much trouble. Arthur Dent turned four recently. He is now constantly shutting the bathroom door behind him with great relish. I’ve also heard him flush about 7 times in one trip. Sigh.
4. Our neighborhood has several pages- a garage sale page, a neighborhood watch page, a mom’s page, etc. Sometimes topics overlap and get posted on both pages. Today was one such day- there was a post about some people hitting golf balls where they shouldn’t have been and hitting both a playground and someone’s house. A person commented on one of the posts, “They high-tailed it outta here, knowing they were in some trouble for darwinism.” I thought, That’s weird. She must have mistyped or got some weird autocorrect. Then, I saw this statement from the same person on another page, “Dangerous! Nothing short of Darwinism.” I was so befuddled. All I could think of was the quote from the movie “The Princess Bride,” which says, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” Turns out, another of my friends thought the same thing. So now I randomly replace words in conversation with her with the word “Darwinism.”
5, One of the real buzzkills about having kids is having to subdue your “colorful language” and basically having to quit cursing. I enjoy a good swear word now and again. To that end, we’ve come up with some alternatives as our kids have grown up. I know our friends have done the same. My favorite? Once we were driving somewhere and The International Man of Intrigue was talking about someone at work and calling him the first word in the term "d—— bag". Amelia Earhart was about 3 and piped up from the back of the van, “Why is he a juice?” From that day forward, we call people who are acting like d—- bags “juice boxes.” For example, “Some juice box cut me off in traffic and then flipped me the bird.” So, do you have any substitute swears?
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