language: speaking

when i was little, i used to wonder how language ws invented. i once asked my mom and she didnt really know either so she just said, it got around.
i would always imagine some king type guy would be in a throne with people beside him and be thinking and every so often he would say something, 'ha! i got one!'and he would tell his servent who then would run around the neighborhood whispering the new word to all the people who answer the door.
i always thought it must be very tiering work. telling all those people on your street.

When I was younger, I thought that Babylon was pronounced "Baby - lon".

When I was about 9 or 10 I used to confuse the meanings of "sensitive" and "sensible", so once I was like to a friend "You're very sensible" when actually I meant sensitive, and her brother(6 yrs older than us) was like "No she's not!" and that's when I got to know the real meanings!

My mother speaks excellent English and is somewhat intolerant of us children when our grammar is less than perfect. She enjoys playing with words, however. When we were younger, she tagged rubber spatulas with the nickname "baby robber". When she made icing or cookies or some other treat, the baby of the family had the agreeable task of taking care of any little bits left in the mixing bowl. If a rubber spatula was used to scrape the bowl clean, then the "baby" was "robbed" of part of their prize. Knowing my mother's low tolerance of inaccuracy in speaking, I assumed that was the correct name. Imagine my horror, in seventh grade HomeEc class, no less, when I discovered the truth.

I remeber sitting in the bath one day contemplating when I was about 4 or 5. I called my Dad into the bathroom and asked, "If lesbians are girls, are leprichauns the boy version of the same thing?" I was puzzled when my Dad fell about laughing. Thinking back, I think the letter 'L' made me think that being gay, you had to have an alternate 'boy' description starting with the same letter, and since Leprichauns were boys...it was logical to me!

When my youngest brother was about three years old, he asked our mother, "Mom, what does 'tell a fib' mean?"

Mom explained, "When you tell a fib, you say something that isn't true. You lie."

My brother was silent for a moment.

Then he asked, "Mom, did *you* ever use a telefib?"

I grew up in a predominantly Catholic neighborhood, and went to Catholic school. There was a family around the corner who had 3 boys that were mildy retarded. One day I asked my mother why they didn't go to the same school as me and my other friends. My mom said "because they're Jewish", without further explanation. So I made the association that "Jewish" meant "retarded", and it was years before someone cleared it up for me.

When I was young, for some reason I was absolutely terrified of saying the word "please." My parents were always telling me that it was rude not to say please when you're asking for something, but somehow this only made me more scared. I still don't know what I was so frightened of.

When i was about 5 years old i used to think 'Splendid' meant horrible, so one day when i left my hat at the park, and we went back to get it to find it gone, i exclaimed: "Maybe a Splendid robber took it!"

i used to think the word "navel" was somthing kind of dirty. i knew it wasnt,but everytime it was said, i would secretly laugh in my head.

When I was about five years old, there was a commercial for Spaghetti-Os that ended with the announcer saying "with and without meatballs". I thought he was saying "withend without meatballs". I surmised that "withend" was another word for pasta or noodles, and at least once, I used the new word, much to the confusion of anyone who heard me.

When I was in 5th grade I was talking to my friend Nora. I was talking about animals and mentioned a "horny toad". I thought this was the kind of toad that has little spike-like things on it's face. Nora started laughing hysterically, and after she was done, she explained to me what the word horny ment, but I still didn't get it.

When my daughters were little, they would say "college cheese" for cottage cheese, and "rock 'n roll ice cream" for rocky road, and "fruit cottontail" for fruit cocktail and "cold slop" for cole slaw. They're 25 & 23 now, but we still use those terms in our house for fun!

When I was a little kid, I thought that all words had their own limit. Which meant that when you said one word was at it maximum, you never could say it again. So I never said words like 'and', 'or' etc. because I was frightened that I never could say those words when I was older. -Actually I never knew what the limits per word were...

Around 3 years old, I was playing with my siblings and something when wrong. My brother said to my sister "It's your fault," and she replied "No, it's Susan's fault" and I then replied "No it's your fork."

When I was a kid, my mother was forever saying, "Why can't you be a gribble?!" This caused me no end of grief. I could never figure out what the heck a gribble was and why I should want to be one.

It was several years later I realized what a gribble was. I guess I was forever asking my mother questions - especially when she told me to do something. Her favorite thing to say was, "Why can't you be agreeable?!"