May 08 2006
Benglish
Ben at the dinner table:
“Oh, come on, green beans, get cool. You’re not hot.”
Parents hear their progeny say things that adults normally would not say. They think it’s cute and, when shared in moderation, so do their family and friends. Heck, there was even a TV show called “Kids Say the Darndest Things,” most recently hosted by Bill Cosby.
There’s a fine line between cute and obnoxious. Of course, the actual act always is cute. The recounting of it, however, can become tiresome and, especially to those who do not have children, downright boring.
I, for one, am not difficult to entertain, and I can get my funny from a variety of sources, both adult and juvenile in nature. Naturally, then, when my own child says something funny, my gut reaction is to burst out in laughter. That tendency was one reason teaching teenagers was a challenge — their jokes more times than not were off-color in nature, and to laugh at them would not be appropriate.
With Ben, the worry is not that my laughter will result in professional peril, but that it might encourage an encore at an inopportune moment. Thus far, the funny utterances usually are unintentional and perfectly acceptable in mixed company. So, chuckling lightly and politely correcting him is an acceptable reaction.
To belabor this point any more is silly. As kids learn words and usage, they will blow it from time to time. Without further fuss, here are a few of Ben’s latest.
At the playground, after setting his toy school bus and bulldozer at the bottom of a slide:
“I going to slide and give my trucks a boo-boo.”
From his bed, masterfully manipulating his parents into stalling the inevitable, but with a slight and endearing error:
“You could kiss my face,” he says, pointing to one cheek.
*smack*
He points to the opposite cheek. “You could kiss my other face.”
*smack*
“You could kiss my nose.”
*smack*
“You could kiss my head.”
*smack*
“You could kiss my chin.”
*smack*
“You could kiss the bunny.”
That last one is tough the first time it happens. If you are not a parent, then how many years have passed since you kissed a stuffed animal? If you have children, and that number never got reset to zero, then how did you pull that off?
For those who have read this far, here is a video made from still shots (animated gif would not do).
Click Here to View the QuickTime Movie
That’s cute…. but HE could get a boo-boo doing that… LOL
You were thinking ahead, 3 years ago, and gave your son that name JUST so you could eventually use that post title, weren’t you?
Dave - I’m slowly learning to let the boy take some risks. Supervised risks, that is.
Simon - We tried to pick a name that was almost tease-proof. Then, when I started posting online albums of baby Ben, lots of fun wordplay popped into my head. Ben a Good Boy Lately, etc.
We started out keeping a diary of cute phrases … but únfortunately we didn’t keep it up. I encourage you to keep blogging your kid’s cute sayings … even if only for your own future reference! I fear many of mine have been irretrievably forgotten.
One of my own favorites that I haven’t forgotten: Christian (maybe 3 yrs old) playing a computer game with me where a cow named Betsy has to cross a bridge filled with holes. Each hole is a specific geometric shape, and you have to choose the correct shape to fill the hole before the cow crosses it. As the cow went forward, he would shout out the shape just before clicking on it:
“Rectangle!” “Triangle!” “Triangle” “Rectangle” …
Then suddenly, a circle hole appeared, and he shouted out:
“Round-angle!”
Jim - Round-angle! I love it. Never heard that one. That’s one thing that’s so great about this phase of their lives — you see them use their brains totally unbridled, creativity flowing and mistakes occurring daily. Then society pounds all that flat. Bummer.