Saturday, December 10, 2005

Dodging the bullet, for now

Listening to: The final version of my happy Holiday mix for the zillionth time

We were supposed to traipse out in this uncharacteristically civilized weather to sit on Santa's lap. Unfortunately, Marni is a miserable little elf with fever and congestion so the visit with Santa was postponed. Scant chance of getting smiles with Santa when one of the munchkins is so sick.

Marni christened my new ride yesterday. Nice how easilly vomit wipes off of leather. Needless to say, she's been on a diet of broth and clear liquids, with the occaisional electrolyte-replacement popsicle. With the popsicles, Zeke sees some value in being sick.

"I tick," he announced, stressing his canard with a little fake cough, "But a pop tit toe would make me feel better."

"Tick" and "Pop tit toe" is, of course 'sick' and 'popsicle' with his inversion of C's and S's with T. Translation can be tricky, even for dad, and at times a little disconcerting. For example, this exchange the other night:

"When I gwo up I gonna be a Top."

WHAAAA?!? A "Top"? WTF? Where did he learn that? For those of you ignorant of the parlance of gay culture, a "top" is the partner in a gay couple who plays the male role.

I was a little reluctant to press him further but as a father, I felt obligated to press him for information. Hey, if my son is gay, I have no problem with that but I think he's a little young at three-years old to be determining what role he'll play in a gay coupling. "Why do you want to be a Top?"

"Tuz', tops have duns and help people"

It took a moment but I realized the D/G inversion which brought me back to the T/C inversion, deductively concluding that he wants to be a 'cop' when he grows up. Don't know if 'cop' is any better than 'top' if slightly more ambitious.

Dodging bullets all day. Someone has a busy 'dun' and one of these days, I'll have to bite the bullet.

6 comments:

landismom said...

At first, when you said "christened your new ride," I was thinking, aw, she came up with a name for it, how cute!

Sorry I was wrong.

Somehow, my kids never want those pedialyte popsicles (which I am about to start calling 'pop tit toes,' btw).

Hope Marni feels better soon.

Panthergirl said...

Hey, a top isn't so bad. Lucas wanted to be a hockey puck. And he wasn't switching ANY letters...

Anne Coleman said...

You make me laugh almost everytime I read here--almost.

Goota love "littlespeak"~I always said they should have a device they can wear around their little necks that would translate for us.

Coffee-Drinking Woman said...

ewwwwww, puke. there's nothing like the aroma lingering in your car, is there?

Mamacita (The REAL one) said...

"High on a hill stood a lonely gopher, lady on a lady on a lady who?"

I loved it. We still sing it that way.

We also still ride the velvagator up to the third floor of Ayres.

Oh, I've got a zillion of them, and most of them we still use.

I mailed out my Mixmania on Dec. 2; a few days later my Windows Media crashed and I have no playlist for it. I'll do my best from memory, but I changed it completely from the one I mailed to you so I hope it's at least recognizeable when I post it. Sigh. I am a nimrod.

Anonymous said...

Hey Jim, for what it's worth, phonetically, the change from

[k] -> [t]

is exactly analogous to the change from

[g] -> [d]

Kiddo's doing the exact same thing to two different sounds!

And sorry to hear about the christening... I puked in my folks new car as we were driving it home long ago. Fortunately, you got the leather; they weren't so lucky. :)