I have no kids, but I remember the tme my german shepherd went through the window of my car, to come looking for me. I was blithely grocery shopping wwhen I heard “Will the owner of a large German Shepherd please come to the front of the store?” Mike saw me coming down the aisle and ran toward me, as pleased as punch.
My nephew caused many embarassing moments. Once when he was just housebreaking age, we tried to impress upon him that big boys poop in the toilet, not in their underwear. He and my sister were sitting on the bus and he was chatting to the people in the seat in front. All sorts on inanities. Then he said “My grampa’s a big boy and he poops in the potty!” Thank God my father wasn’t there.
Same child, in the mall. My sister and I are in a clothing store. He walks over to a not-latched fitting room door and pulls it open revealing the unclad woman to the whole store. “Hi! How’re you doing?”
My mom likes to talk about the time that I threw myself down on the ground to throw a tantrum while we were in a store, only to stop about fifteen seconds later when I realized where I was and that I was perfectly well-behaved the rest of the trip.
I have to admit that I don’t think I’d have the cojones to do this.
When I’d make a scene at home, my Grandmother used to imitate me, crying, yelling, the whole bit. It freaked me out so much that I’d quit. I don’t think she’d try it in public, though.
In general, The Littlest Briston speaks very well for her age (nearly two). However, there are a few words that she just…says…wrong. No matter how many times we correct her, she continually says them wrong.
For instance – we say “chair”, she says “touch”. If we say “are you sitting on the chair?”, she says “yes, sitting on touch”. It’s odd…she seems to think she’s saying it right. If we say “point to the touch”, she has no idea what we mean. "If we say “point to the chair”, she points right to the chair. Strange. And she has a couple of these mix-up words.
One of the others is for the word “car”. She refuses to say “car”…no no, to her, it’s “gun”. That’s lead to a few minor bits of “Shhhh! Stop saying ‘gun’ over and over!”, but the one time that it really came to a head was when we were leaving a restaurant. See, she’ll sometimes make that association with my car keys as well. We’re wending our way through the crowd of tables when I pull out my keys and hang them from my belt (easier access when we get to the car). And my precious little bundle of joy looks up, points to my waistband, and proceeds to yell “GUN! GUN! GUN!”
My poor mother. My brother was so, so good at saying the most mortifying things in public. I have a million stories about malapropisms or times he misspelled common things to make new and obscene phrases… (I think I’ve told the “mad piss” story here at some point.)
I grew up in the 'burbs. The very, very white suburbs. So very white.
My mother took my brother and I to buy new shoes one day, and the salesman was a young black man. My brother, who was all of maybe 4 or so, starts asking my mother in that imperious little boy with a question voice:
“Mommy, why is that man that color? Is that an oreo cookie man, mommy? Mommy, that man is brown! How come I’m not brown? I think he’s an oreo cookie man.”
Over and over and over. My mother had no idea what to do. She tried to shush him but this made him more insistent, because the little bugger could tell he was doing something wrong but didn’t know what. The man was right there, putting shoes on my brother and I, not batting an eye. My mother tried to explain to my brother, all the while apologizing to the salesman, that some people were born with white skin, some were born with dark skin, and that was all there was to it. The salesman thankfully was understanding and knew it wasn’t any sort of malice or learned behaviour that my brother was showing; he realized he had probably never seen a “real live” black person before.
My mother still cringes when she thinks of it, and it was almost 25 years ago.
Slight hijack but I just saw a video on some America’s Funniest or some such, where a toddler was having an on-the-floor screaming tantrum. The parent videotaping it slowly backed away and around a corner, out of line-of-sight (this was at home). Whereupon the child stopped howling. Got up. Followed the parent. Spotted the parent. Flung himself down on the floor and resumed howling. The parent moved around another corner. The child repeated his stop/move/find/resume maneuver. This went on at least 6 times before the tape stopped.
We were guffawing. And they won the big cash prize. I can’t decide whether the toddler was evil or brilliant or both /hijack
Oh, I thought of one of my own, that I embarrassed my parents with.
I used to never eat. My parents despaired of getting me to eat anything. They tried threats, cajoling, spankings, time-outs - didn’t matter. They found sometimes I would eat McDonald’s so out of desperation they would take me there so I would eat something.
Well, they took me there once, and there’s a PlayPlace. So they’re telling me “Eat the cheeseburger and then you can go play.” I really didn’t want the cheeseburger. I remember forcing down 3-4 bites and then suddenly throwing it up loudly all over my plate. (Not maliciously, as I wasn’t a malicious child.)
I did mortify my Aunt when she was about 17 years old and taking me to the grocery store when I was a young one. I have to estimate I was 4 or 5 at the time.
Basically I was a reader and an incessant talker, and I liked to repeat things I’d heard on commercials and in books (for example, Garfield the cat would say, ‘‘The devil made me do it!’’ I had no idea what it meant, but I said it to my Mom once when I did something bad and booyyyy did she not like that one.)
Anyways, I was looking at the grocery store signs over the aisles, and I saw one that said ‘‘Yeast.’’ There was only one context in which I’d heard that word on TV.
So naturally I began to cry, ‘‘YEAST INFECTIONS! YEAST INFECTIONS!’’ over and over as we cruised up and down the grocery aisles.
When my now-16 year old nephew was 5 he had apparently had some sort of ailment that caused him to pee a lot. Probably had just been drinking more than usual and my sister, his mother didn’t realize and told him he had an infection. So, soon after that we were walking down the street, just him and me, and he proclaimed “Stupid fucking urine! I have my disease again!” I felt very smug at the time because I was just the Auntie but it occurs to me now, 11 years later, that nobody knew it since my sister and I are identical twins. So :o again.
A couple of things stand out. The first is when my son was about 4. We were at a grocery store and he told me he had to pee. I told him to wait a minute and I would take him to the rest room. About 30 seconds later I look over to see him standing in a corner peeing. Of course before I could do anything, a woman starts calling out to all within earshot that there was a little boy peeing on the floor.
The second time was about 3 months after my wife and I had met. We went out to dinner with her 2 daughters, they were 12 and 8 at the time. The 12 year old said she had to go the the bathroom, as she stood up she stuck her butt towards her sister and ripped one of the loudest and smelliest farts that I can remember. The noise attracted the attention of those nearby then the smell started to drift. I sunk down behind my menu, if I could have shrunk down smaller I would have.
My daughter never had a tantrum in her life, bless her heart. (not with me anyway…she may have pulled that crap with her grandma but neither of them would tell me).
But she had very vivid imaginary friends, and the rule was, fine, have them all you want, but leave them at home…don’t take them to school and such.
That seemed to work fine, until her first day of ballet class. Her dad and I just sat there shocked and wide-eyed as she buckeled under the stress of having to meet the new girls, who already knew each other. She just decided to go ahead and start a long intricate conversation with KiKi and Goo (aww, I miss those guys). There was silence in the room as everyone stared at my baby talking with very animated gestures to thin air.
The ballet teacher looked both fascinated and embarrassed for us.
Ivylad was off on a six month Med run, and I had a newborn and a three year old. I had to go to the bank. I’m standing in line, holding diaper bag, deposit slip, money, purse, keys, and I put the baby carrier down.
Ivyboy started messing with the baby carrier, rocking his sister a bit hard, and since my hands were full, I tapped him with my foot, telling him to stop.
He looked up at me and said, “Mommy! Don’t kick me!”
When my brother was old enough to probably know better, but young enough to probably get away with it, he did a good one. We were eating at our favorite restaurant, when in the middle of dinner TypoBro asks our Mom “What’s an orgasm?” Without missing a beat, TypoMom says “It’s the height of sexual pleasure,” and goes on with the rest of the meal. TypoBro didn’t know what to say after that!
When I was but a wee misspelling, my Grandmother was taking me on a big trip - I was going to ride the bus across town!! We were waiting for the bus and talking. Just as the bus pulled up, I said “Grandma, sometimes my tushie makes a funny noise? Why does my tushie make a funny noise?” Etc. I didn’t shut up abut this until after she bought our tickets and we gt on the bus. :eek: Thank goodness I have understanding relatives - or I wouldn’t be here today!
Another one about my kids - Mama Zapa and I have always disliked McNuggets. Maybe they were once decent and made out of actual chicken. For about 20 minutes, back in the 60s. But our younguns luuurved them. Eveytime we were at MickeyD’s the Missus and I would make disparaging remarks about the nuggets - fried beak and feathers, pteradactyl nuggets, buzzard bites, etc.
We thought the kids weren’t listening - heaven knows they didn’t listen to anything else we said.
Then Mama Zappa took Dweezil to a friend’s birthday party. The kids were about 5. Besides cake there were some chicken nuggets for the kids. Not from The Scottish Place! These were from actual poultry, made in the same same decade - nay the same year! - as they were defrosted, cooked, and served. But while Mama Zappa is talking to our hostess, Dweezil walks up and says very excitedly “Mommy - they have buzzard bites!” :eek:!
Luckily, our friend has a few kids of her own, and a great sense of humor to go with them. Phew!
Not my kid and this happened years ago, but one day my mom had a friend and her 5-6 year old daughter over for dinner. While we sitting around chatting, the friend catches a whiff of bad air and turns to her daughter and says “Jaime, did you break wind? The daughter, with her sweet innocent cherub face, looks up to her and says, “no mommy, your breath smells like breaking wind.” What else could a 14 year old me do except bust out laughing, which I promptly got swatted for.
After they left, me and mom howled about it, and 25 years later, we still get a chuckle out it on occasion.
Once when my now-9-yearold was about 2, I took him to an urgent care. After we saw the doctor, and were on our way out, I had to go to the bathroom. The bathroom was right off of the waiting room, which was of course full of people, a lot of them facing the bathroom door. I’m sitting there peeing, and all of a sudden he opens the door! I’m quietly freaking out, telling him to “shut the door! shut the door right now!” but all of a sudden he doesn’t understand English and he doesn’t shut the door. I had to stand up in front of the whole room, pull up my pants, and shut the door. After a couple minutes, I picked him up, and literally RAN out of the place, never to return. That has got to be the most embarrassing experience of my entire life.
It was the 90s, and women’s professional basketball was just taking off. I was a wee lad in the DC area, as overwhelmingly liberal then as it has ever been, and my parents were notorious feminists (that’s not a bad thing–I’m a feminist, myself) and acquaintances of Gloria Steinem. My late grandmother had been a basketball player, and my cousin was a softball phenom at the time.
We were in a waiting room of some kind (can’t remember what for) and there was another couple there with their daughter, about the same age as I was. I was playing with this toy that was basically a miniature basketball catapult with a little miniature hoop attached --very popular at the time, and especially in basketball-crazy DC. Anyway, the little girl started playing on it too, and I protested, “Girls can’t play basketball!”
Mom: :eek:
Girl’s dad: :eek:
Dad: :eek: :eek:
Girl’s mom: :eek: :eek: :eek:
My mom: “We didn’t teach him that! I SWEAR he didn’t hear it from us!”
My mother is a military officer of fairly high rank and prestige. I have fond and not-so-fond memories of the various military installations in the area, probably Andrews AFB and some naval base or other in Norfolk most of all. Anyway, at one point, I was in a room with just my mom and her commanding officer, and I piped up, “You know what I really hate about having parents in the Navy?”
My mother maintains that the moment after I said that was one of the most terrifying intervals of a few seconds in her entire adult life.
Mom: :eek:
Mom’s CO: Go ahead, what is it?
Me: All the acronyms!
all around.
Children can understand language better than they can produce it, at all levels. She knows “touch” is not the word for “chair”, but she’s convinced that what she’s saying is actually “chair”. My last linguistics prof illustrated this principle with the story of a little impromptu experiment he conducted on his then-tiny nephew:
Nephew: Look at my tar! [car, as in toy car]
Prof: Oh, is that your tar?
Nephew: NO! It’s my tar! [car]
Prof: It’s your tar, huh?
Nephew: NO! It’s my TAR!
Prof: Ohhhh! It’s your car?
Nephew: Uh huh, my tar!
I was picking up Sophie from after-care yesterday a bit early and she wasn’t having any of it (she loves after-care). She began crying, “Daddy, I don’t WANT to leave!”, winding herself up for a full tantrum.
I leaned down and said “Sophie, if you don’t stop I’ll make sure that every child in here will look at you acting like a baby.”
But both of these stories made me chortle.
Eveytime we were at MickeyD’s the Missus and I would make disparaging remarks about the nuggets - fried beak and feathers, pteradactyl nuggets, buzzard bites, etc.