 |
A word aptly spoken
___Note: We are deliberately avoiding the New Year’s/new millennium resolutions type of column. We’ve read enough of it in the last year, so we'll spare you. Plus, when you’re grateful just to stay awake until midnight New Year's Eve, what else is there to say?
|
___ Second grade boys can be fun, if you can tolerate their brand of humor, but engaging them in conversations beyond Pokemon and bodily functions takes
 |
ALISON WINGFIELD
|
some doing.
When our boys were younger, just about everything they said (except for "no!" and "mine!") was cute--at least to their doting parents and grandparents. However, withtheir new attitudes about what's cool and what's not--and the lovely sarcasm they are learning to use--the fun words and phrases seem fewer and farther between.
But all kids manage to get in some great lines from time to time.
Both our boys just recently stopped calling magazines "mazagines." Reminds me of when I used to say basghetti for spaghetti.
Luke calls Pokemon with "psychic" powers "sisic."(You knew it wouldn’t be long before that "P" word was mentioned again.) Of course, never mind that both boys can pronounce every single Pokemon name while their parents remain clueless.
Our most recent funny statement comes from a younger child.
We recently had a family from church over for dinner. They were trying to explain what Mark’s job was to their 4-year-old son, telling him Mark worked for the Baptist Standard and wrote articles for the newspaper they received at home from the church.
Josh quickly replied: "Oh, I know, he writes the words in black, and Dr. Mason (our pastor) writes the words in red." Let’s hope our pastor doesn’t get too big a head over that one.
The words I hope don’t disappear from the boys’ vocabularies anytime soon are those from their toddler days. These seem so natural to them they don’t realize they are saying them. So far, blankey, teddy, mommy and daddy have survived, at least when their friends aren't around. We have segued into mom and dad when friends are over. As long as I get my "I love you, Mommy" for the day, I’ll take it.
|
|
___I like the way kids make up words for things they don’t know what else to call. Like the other day, Luke was watching me use my
 |
MARK WINGFIELD
|
power drill as a screwdriver to put together a wooden workbench in the garage. He announced to his brother that I was using my "drill gun."
Sometimes I even catchmyself picking up their made-up words and repeating them in conversation. I don’t know if it’s because they make more sense or because you just become brainwashed after awhile.
And then sometimes you just nearly fall down laughing at the ways kids use words incorrectly but with great enthusiasm. During a recent game of kid football in our front yard, Matthew, a 5-year-old neighbor, wanted to encourage a fellow player to be aggressive. So he shouted out: "Offend him! Offend him!"
Of course, when you’re playing games with neighborhood kids in the front yard, you get an entirely different perspective on things. Michael, a fifth-grader who lives across the street, paid me a huge compliment the other day and didn’t even know it.
I was throwing a football back and forth to him across two lawns, and he stopped at one point and said, "Wow! Did you play football before?"
The notion that I would have played college or even junior high football is something just short of hysterical to imagine. I tried to explain that skinny, uncoordinated kids like me weren’t allowed to play football in Oklahoma. But I thanked him for seeing potential in me.
Though we sometimes misuse and abuse them, words are a gift from God to bring laughter, love and insight into life. Proverbs 25:11 says it well: "A word aptly spoken is like apples of gold in settings of silver."
Mark Wingfield is managing editor of the Standard. Alison Wingfield is a freelance writer. The Wingfields moved to Texas from Louisville, Ky., where Mark had been editor of the Western Recorder, in which this column appeared weekly.
|
|
|
PREVIOUS COLUMNS: 6/16, 6/23, 6/30, 7/14, 7/21, 7/28, 8/4, 8/11, 8/18, 8/25, 9/1, 9/8, 9/15, 9/29, 10/6, 10/13, 10/20, 10/27 11/17, 11/24, 12/1, 12/8, 12/15, 12/22
Contents/ Masthead / Why We're Here / Links / Archive / E-mail us/ SUBSCRIBE!
|