My five year old nephew came over to spend the day with his ‘cool aunts’ and I was having a hard time entertaining him.
He tired of video games in about an hour, we made some cookies, read his books, and it was still another 20 minutes until we were due to leave for the movies. Normally, my sister gives him the run of the cable TV, so he is used to constant entertainment.
So, we all started to play a word game where you talk about something, but use a rhyming word instead.
“I put my brass on the mable!” he said, pretty good rhyming for a kid for ‘I put my glass on the table’.
The time finally came to leave for the movies, and we were still playing the rhyming game as we were walking down the stairs of my building. He looked over and saw the mail truck and said “look at the pail truck!” I thanked my stars that he chose ‘mail’ to rhyme, and we kept going through different rhymes: ‘jail truck’, ‘bale truck’, ‘sale truck’…
We got to the second floor landing just as my brand-new-just-moved-in-that-week neighbor woman was coming out of her door.
Lucas immediately swapped focus, and joyfully shouted “Look at the big whore!”
I sat back on the steps, I was laughing so hard - it was just so unnexpected, I had to laugh. My sister hung onto the railing and laughed, and Lucas just stood there, puzzled. My neighbor had gone back inside immediately, acting like she hadn’t heard anything unusual.
When I finally got myself under control, I asked “what on earth were you trying to rhyme?” He pointed silently to… the door.
This past Wednesday night, my two youngest children were coloring in their new coloring books they got for Christmas. The youngest age 3 asked the older one age 7 if the picture she was coloring was of a horse. The older one told her no, it was a mule. She colored a bit longer, and brought the picture over to me. She asked me if it was a horse. I told her no, it was a mule. She sat back down on the floor and colored a few minutes longer. She got up, toddled up to her dad and asked him if the picture she was coloring was horse. He told her no, it was a mule.
She sat back down and started to color again.
In a very low voice she said, “It’s a horse, damnit” and went back to coloring. She didn’t say another word about it again.