When my children were tiny, they often used words or expressions that were. . . almost correct. In fact, some of their words and expressions were better than the actual word or expression they were trying for.

We still use some of them in our everyday speech.

For example, if we need to go from the first floor to the third floor of a department store, we often step onto the velvagator. You know, those moving stairs?

One hot summer day, there was a pesky fly in the house. After watching his father bat it away several times, my tiny toddler son finally spoke up:

“Daddy, why don’t you flice it?”

Um, say what?

“Flice it, Daddy!”

And how does one do that?

“With the watter, Daddy. Flice it with the watter.”

And he did, and all was well.

We still call it the watter, and we still flice with it.

And now I’m in the mood to watch “Clash of the Titans.” You know, Clash. As in, “Anne of Green Gables.” Anne. Clash. Anne. Clash. Anne. “Susannah of the Mounties.” Susannah. Clash. Anne. “Tess of the d’Urbervilles.” Tess. Clash. Anne. Susannah. Clash

Ah, sweet semantical grammar: how it can betray us if we don’t pay attention to the details.

Harry Hamlin will always be “Clash” to me, forever and always. I first met Clash while staying at the Indianapolis Hyatt, helping to chaperone the yearly high school Beta Convention. After spending possibly eight days riding up and down in their Great Glass Elevator a la Charlie Bucket, my toddlers and I crashed on one of the two twin beds in that grand suite and watched Perseus Clash slay Medusa and defeat the Kraken, all the while having a torrid illicit behind-the-scenes-but-everyone-on-the-planet-knew-it affair with Aphrodite who later bore his child out of wedlock. My tiny son misunderstood the title, and Harry Hamlin became Clash. I am not a Clash fan, because a celebrity’s real-life behavior completely colors any character he/she portrays, and I consider Clash just one more horndog who can’t keep it in his pants, (ever and always a choice!) but the memory of that night at the Hyatt, three people on one twin bed, watching Clash pretend to love Andromeda whilst actually lusting away for the older woman who played Aphrodite and who had no ethics either, will stay with me forever.

It’s after four in the afternoon. I really need to get dressed. I’m going to the theater with Mom tonight, and I’ve got to do enough laundry so we can make a path through the piles before she picks me up. I hate it when we have to step on the clothes to get from the garage to the stairway. Not that it ever happens here.

Verbs. How important can they be? I mean, if it were so important to choose verbs carefully, why do most of them have a million synonyms, thank you very much Mr. Thesaurus.

Well, kids, I’ll tell ya.

Let’s use a couple of common verbs for examples.

“Stop.” “Block” Denotatively speaking (dictionary definition) they are almost identical. In a thesaurus, their synonyms overlap.

Thesaurus entry for “stop” and for “block:”

Main Entry: stop

Part of Speech: verb

Synonyms: arrest, avoid, bar, block, bottle up, break, can, check, choke, choke off, clog, close, congest, cut off, disrupt, fill, fix, forestall, frustrate, gag, hinder, hold back, hush hush, ice, impede, intercept, interrupt, muzzle, obstruct, occlude, plug, rein in, repress, restrain, seal, shut down, shut off, shut out, silence, stall, staunch, stay, stem, still, stopper, suspend, throw over, turn off, ward off

Main Entry: block

Part of Speech: verb

Synonyms: arrest, bar, barricade, block out, blockade, brake, bung up, catch, charge, check, choke, clog, close, close off, close out, congest, cut off, dam, deter, fill, halt, hang up*, hinder, hold up, impede, intercept, interfere, occlude, plug, prevent, shut off*, shut out, stall, stonewall, stop, stop up*, stopper, stymie, tackle, thwart

And these two fraternal twins differ. . . . how?

Like this:

Back in the day, when I wore shorts and began my descent from the car in a public place, I could stop traffic.

Now, that same action would block traffic.

Any questions?

Mamacita, Scheiss Weekly

I really enjoy working out in the yard most of the time. However, there is one chore that I absolutely loathe, and that is picking up fallen limbs and branches before I can mow the grass. For some reason, this really hits me in a bad place.

Today, when I got home from school, before I even went into the house, I decided to get rid of the branches and limbs that were in the front yard, so I could rev up the riding mower and get some serious cutting done. Then, I went over to the side yard where I had left the wheelbarrow, upside down, last fall.

Yes, I really hate picking up fallen limbs and branches, putting them in the wheelbarrow, and dumping them on the absolutely humongous brushpile we’re building in the back yard.

I especially hate this chore when I turn the wheelbarrow over and see this.

Oh, I’m not afraid of them. I just don’t want them to get in my house again.

And I didn’t poison, blind, or throw caustic acid on them this time, either. Nor did I set their den on fire, or blow it up from the inside.

But I do know where they live, and I’ll be back.

So then I cut some grass for about fifteen minutes until I ran out of gas.

I said a few naughty words, got my tests and my ugly 500-pound purse out of the van, and came inside.

The end.