“Now class, it’s like math, you call it what it is.”
Whatever you call it, it is what it is: a fart.
Not long ago a father with a newborn asked me, a father of three children under the ages of eight, the correct terminology for when a baby, well, passes gas.
I thought about it. There must be dozens of alternatives, if not more. Botty burps, gas, pump, trump and wind. Then there are phrases like pass gas, cut the cheese, let off a bomb, drop a bomb, rip off a loud one or break wind or let it fly or let it rip. I could go on.
I wrote back and told him to try flatulence. [continue reading…]
“Hey, don’ t shoot!”
My son yelled at his younger sister, “Don’t do that!” followed by a pause and then a louder yell of “Mummy!”
The youngest comes running into the playroom where I’ve just finished putting up a chalkboard. I’m on a ladder now in the next room hanging up curtains, out of site of the three-year-old.
“I need to make a drawing,” the youngest says to herself, picking up a piece of chalk and speedily drawing on the board as if to show us parents (she’s not seen me) that she’s been busy and can in no way be linked to the incident with her brother. [continue reading…]
“Yeah, the table is a bit wobbly. But it goes with the floor.”
My forte isn’t home repair and maintenance. My wife knows that and for the most part she doesn’t complain.
I put up a shelf in the kitchen. It came out crooked even after my eyeballing it and using a scale.
I looked nervously at my wife and confessed my blunder.
She shrugged her shoulders and said, “It doesn’t matter. It goes with the rest of the house.”
I relaxed.
Then my eyes narrowed as I thought of the implication: all my home repairs are crooked.
She seemed to be reading my mind.
“I think it’s charming,” she said. “It’s us.”
I made her a hot tea.
