(I want to make it clear up front that I’m not making fun of this situation. Just consider this another example of how a small typo and unintentional ambiguity can lead to sitcom like situations.)
Message received via text yesterday: Notre Dame is on fire right now.
My actual first response: Come on, even I know that Notre Dame isn’t playing today.
Me not long after: Oh! Notre-Dame is on fire! YIKES!
This morning: Went over the Preamble to the Constitution with my son.
By afternoon: Realized I had already sung the damn song easily a dozen times.
If someone knocks on your door and your dog doesn’t bark, did the knock actually make a sound?
Mysterious Voice (My son): Once again we need your help on an adventure.
Our “Not So Brave” Hero (Me): Can’t you get somebody else to do it?
Mysterious Voice: We wanted Superman, but he’s on another continent.
Our “Not So Brave” Hero: I can wait.
Mysterious Voice: No!
Our “Not So Brave” Hero: Fiiiiiiiiine.
Recently I used the phrase “chewing the scenery” within earshot of my son, but I had my doubts that he’d fully understood what I meant until a few days later I heard him say that someone was “chewing the scenery like a rancor chewing on the fourth wall.”
“We’ll get started in about twenty minutes,” I told my son this morning. “Nineteen minutes, to be precise.”
“I thought you were done with being ‘precise,'” he replied. “It’s kind of annoying.”
“The day I can say ‘about twenty minutes’ and you accept that as an answer is the day I’ll stop being so ‘precise,'” I told him.
“But is that eighteen minutes . . . or twenty-two . . . or seventeen . . . or what?” my son then wanted to know.
Me (while staring at a project in progress that took two hours of research and back and forth tweaking to make something work): After all that, I wonder what the odds are that I’ve managed to at least save as much time on the next step as I spent on this one trying to make the next step easier? Probably best not to dwell on it and just move on.
Lala: I’m going to draw a bath.
Me: *doesn’t take the joke bait, but it doesn’t make any difference*
Lala: . . . with crayon!
L’s Mother: You should use water colors instead!
To follow-up on yesterday, apparently right after I went back today for a quick nap, my son lost his pet rock. (It was later recovered.) While he and Lala searched the house, he asked her if they should ask me if I knew where it was.
Checking the bedroom door and finding it locked (something I do when I want to make it clear I’m not to be casually disturbed), my son wanted to knock, but Lala said no.
“If he’s resting, we shouldn’t wake him with a loud knock,” she said.
*Cue the only delivery man in weeks to actually knock on our door loud enough to be heard to knock like the police are about to break down our door.*
“Yeah, like that one,” Lala sighed.
Candles & Curses 