The writer's son

The old saying goes that the preacher's child is always the wildest of the bunch. Well, I'm no preacher, but I do make my living stringing together words. I ensure they work well with one another, flow nicely, are used in context, and above all, are spelled correctly. All skills which are, quite sadly, absent in my son.

I've always been fascinated by words, and though I struggled mightily with math, I never had a problem with spelling. Spelling came as naturally to me as breathing.

Which is why my son is going to drive me to an early grave. I don't have obnoxiously high standards for the kid, and I don't expect him to master every subject in school. But spelling is his worst subject, BY FAR, and it tears my heart to shreds each time I watch him take pencil to paper and massacre those wonderful words.

If you think I'm kidding, or prone to hyperbole (as we writers often are), here's my proof: this week's pre-spelling test.



That's right, he missed 18 out of 22 words. EIGHTEEN!

Well, technically, not all of the 18 words were spelled incorrectly. He spelled "blister" right--except it was supposed to be "blizzard." He also spelled "Beth" correctly, although his teacher was expecting "breadth." My favorite may be the word he just made up--"swisted." Although now that I'm writing these out, I'm starting to worry less about his spelling ability, and more about his hearing...

Some of the words he's never encountered in real life, so how could I expect him to spell them right? He wouldn't know thrift if it smacked him upside the head with a coupon, and the closest he's gotten to a catastrophe was losing his Nintendo DS for the past couple weeks (I'd misplaced it, but recently found it--cotastfry averted!). I'll give him some credit though--whoever corrected his paper also spelled it wrong.

I guess I should be more positive. He did spell mistake and giggle right, but he's done both of those a lot. He got simple right--it was simple enough to spell. And he got igloo right, which surprised me--who knew they even discussed igloos in school anymore?

Maybe I am expecting too much. Or maybe it's just that as a writer, it's hard to see him butcher my beloved English language. I certainly don't get upset when he does less than perfect in math--but then again, I always hated math.

Sigh. Maybe I'll start burying books underneath his pillow at night--or his list of spelling words. Maybe he can absorb them by osmosis, in his sleep. And then we'd really find the Beth of his knowledge!

Hold what?!?

Mark and I were harassing each other yesterday, and his go-to move is always to start singing the Mini-Sirloin Burgers song from the Jack in the Box commercials. (He knows that song gets stuck in my head and drives me insane.)

Only, for some reason, he was pronouncing it wrong. What is sounded like he was saying was "Mini sewerline burgers."

"Sir-loin!" I corrected.

"That's what I said," he corrected back.

"No," I told him. "You said 'sewer-line.' It's SIR-loin."

"Whatever," he said, and kept on singing.

But a minute later, he asked how it was pronounced again. Then he tried it out.

"Sir-loin burger," he said. "But hold the tomato." He giggled.

"That's right," I praised him.

"Or, sir-loin," he said again. "As in, 'Sir, hold my loin.'"

At which point I almost crashed the car.

"What is a loin?" he asked, curious.

"It's a part of the cow where they get the meat," I told him. Then, lest he repeat it again at an inopportune time, I added, "It's also means your privates."

"WHAT?" he shouted from the back seat. He was shocked into silence for a moment, then started snickering and said, "That's not right. That is just sooooo not right! How could you let me say that!"

"I didn't know you were gonna say it!" I exclaimed, just as shocked as he was.

I parked the car and we got out, and he was still shaking his head. "I can't believe I said that!" he told me again, and I just agreed.

If nothing else, it was a good lesson on context. And how dangerous using words out of context can be!

Fun with words

One great thing about kids is that you not only see them grow physically, you can also hear them grow intellectually.

Every day Mark tries out new words he's heard. Sometimes they make sense, in both pronunciation and context ("This shrimp tastes peculiar!") and sometimes they don't ("Oooh, I just got goosebumps on my flush!").

Yesterday, he brought me two new interesting words. The first was the name of something he bought at school. "Look, Mom," he called to me, "I got a new Smencil!"

"You got a new pencil?" I asked, a little confused.

"No," he said, "Not a pencil, a SMENCIL. It's a pencil that smells good!"

He showed me. The pencil was made of recycled newspapers, placed in a plastic tube. Mark uncorked it and thrust it at my nose.

He was right, it did smell good. Like grapes. Or rather, grape candy, since grapes don't really have much of a smell. I inhaled, and then Mark re-capped the tube.

"Don't wanna use it all up at once," he said protectively.

He liked his new Smencil so much, he even took it in to his drum lesson. He came out of the lesson juggling two drumsticks, a notebook and his Smencil.

"Can I help you?" I asked. He handed over the drumsticks and notebook, then opened the Smencil tube, took a quick whiff, and re-capped it. "It's so goooood!" he said.

We were meeting my friend Nicky for dinner. During the drive, Mark uncapped the tube and smelled his Smencil at least five more times.

When I couldn't take it any more, I told him to stop sniffing the pencil every three seconds, or I would take it away. He looked (and sounded) like some sort of addict taking quick hits from his clear little vial.

Which prompted Mark to share his second new vocabulary word with me.

"Mom," he said, "Sometimes you're a tyrant."

I almost crashed the car. This was definitely a bite-your-tongue, don't-laugh-out-loud moment.

"Oh, I am?" I replied, trying to remain very serious. "Do you know what 'tyrant' means?"

"Yes," Mark answered. "It means sometimes you're unfair, and kinda mean. You only do what you want to, and you don't listen to what anyone else has to say." When he realized that sounded kind of...not nice, he repeated, "Sometimes."

I was so proud and somewhat offended all at once--he knew the context of a new word (yay!), then used it to describe me in an unflattering way (boo!).

But I don't take things like that too seriously--truth be told, it kinda cracked me up. I thought this was a learning opportunity, rather than a get-really-defensive opportunity.

"You're right, that is what it means," I told him. "Good job! But if that's the true definition, don't you think you're kind of a tyrant sometimes, too?"

Mark was caught off guard by that one. "I'm not a tyrant!"

"Well," I reasoned, "You said that I'm mean, and only want to do things my way. Aren't you the same? Don't you always want me to do things your way? Don't you get mad when I won't?"

"True," he admitted.

"And don't you ignore me when I ask you multiple times to do something you don't want to do?"

He nodded. I could see him looking out the car window now--he wasn't quite sure how the conversation had turned against him.

"Well then," I told him cheerfully. "I guess we're both a couple of tyrants! Good thing we've got each other."

I could see him smile in the rear view mirror. But I knew he still thinking I was a bigger tyrant than he was.

I'm the mom--sometimes being a tyrant is part of the job. And I'm okay with that, as long as the child I'm lording my tyranny over can protest by using his really good vocabulary.