language: speaking

Nephew aged 6 was crazy about westerns but always called cavalry, "cattle-ry". Well, I suppose the other blokes on horses were called "Cowboys" - so, logical? He was so persistent that the whole family now says the same, thirty years later!

Maybe a feature of my minor variant of dyslexia, maybe not ... as I kid I pronounced 'schweppes' as skech-e-ewipes- ... needless to say there were many parental corrections until I finally got my tongue around it - and in those days I only encountered it on planes!

I watched the Peanuts halloween TV special, "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown," every year when I was a kid. I got very confused when Linus kept saying that his pumpkin patch had nothing but sincerity "as far as the eye can see" because, besides not knowing what sincerity was, I always heard the last part as "asfarazee I can see." I always wondered what an asfarazee was and why it was so great that Linus could see it.

For some reason I thought that the word "tardy" meant dirty. One time in 3rd grade I was late to school, so my dad was writing a letter to my teacher and I was reading over his shoulder, and when I saw what he wrote, I exclaimed "Why would you say I'm tardy?!" and started checking my sweater for dirt and smoothing down my hair. He told me that it just meant late, but I still insisted that he change the word to "late" not tardy, because I was not dirty!

When I was little I used to think the word illegal was a sick bird! And always felt bad for all of the eagles in the news when I heard about some illegal act.. What a strange child was I.

When my sister was little, we would stay at home alone together a lot. We were sitting around one night when the phone rang. I went and answered it and came back It was just a telemarketer so I had hung up rather quickly. My sister asked who it was, and I was in the mood to speak fancily. So I told her it was a solicitor. She wouldn't stop screaming that I shouldn't scare her like that and to stop being mean. She was so loud, it took me a while to calm her down. Once she had settled herself a bit, she let me know (very defiantly) that she knew solicitor meant murderer and that I was just trying to scare her.

When i was really little, every time my mom came home with a bag of something, I was always ask what was in it. Every time i got the same responce: "Hooks to catch suckers, and you're the first to bite." Well, I never really listened to the second part. All i knew is that i wanted to get into that bag and get some of the 'special' hooks to catch me some suckers! (what little kid doesn't like candy?) It wasn't until i was about 17 that i realized the meaning behind that saying. Thankx so much mom.

i used to think that the word "candid" meant "candied", so when i heard of candid photos, i thought that it meant photographs that were somehow coated with candy. I still imagine a screen full of little candies when i think of the tv show "candid camera"

I used to believe…

up until fourth grade, i thought that "compliment" was another word for insult.
so whenever i would make a joke about someone, you could see them chasing me around with me screaming "it's not a compliment! it's not a compliment!"

I used to think the term "breaking a record" literally meant you took a record(the kind that plays music) and broke it in half. I didnt understand why it really mattered when people did it and why they got famouse for it. I also thought that in the Guinness Book of World Records, guinness was an adjective descibing how great the broken records were or something. It was all very confusing. Im still not really sure if guinness is a name or what. I sure am smart.

My neighbours little boy spent one very hot summer on the beach with his father- who every time a pretty girl went buy used to say "Get 'em off, get 'em off - show us what you've got". One winter evening there was a fluttering at the window and the boy asked his father what it was and the father replied that it was a moth looking for the light - the boy then asked "What - a getamoth?" - Out of the mouths of babes .....

When I was a kid and said "no" to something simple my Dad asked me to do, he would say "What did your last servant die of, a humphy back?" or the short version "What did you last servant die of?" Of course being a kid and not knowing what a servant was, all I heard was a bunch of syllables going whatdidyourlastservantdieof. I thought it just meant "Do it yourself". Then one day in school the teacher wanted me to write on the blackboard and I asked her "What did your last servant die of." That was not fun.

We were once Burgled and so have a couple of my friends and our parents used to always refer to it as "The house is Upside down, its so messy" I was always puzzled upon returning back from school to see it back in its place again, the right way up!

I used to think grown-ups had this rule that when someone didn't hear what you said, you had to say it in another way. I remember this happening when I was watching tv with my mom.
The woman on tv said: "I think we should break up" the man would say: "What?!"
and the woman would reply: "It's just not working out".
I found it strange that the woman just didn't repeat what she said since the man didn't hear her. Instead she said something else and I never understood why....

I remember hearing the words 'the numbers are in numerical order' on the lottery. At the time I thought the announcer had said 'the numbers are inAmerican order'.

When I was a kid I couldn't figure out for the life of me how to say the words "A Adult" without it sounding strange, (At the time I wasn't aware of the word 'an') and often ended up saying "A grown-up".