A few words about words

October 27, 2008 by Barbara.

I’ve been thinking about sharing some Reid-isms for a while and tonight is the night I’m actually writing about them.

Pardon you, what you say? - This one is impossible to reflect back in a way that helps Reid hear the proper usage. I’ll ask rhetorically, “What did I say?” and then continue but we’ll have to wait for the arrival of “pardon me”.

Ee-chother (with the accent on the second syllable) - referring to the two of us together, I don’t know how often I use this reflexive pronoun but I noticed it in the last month or so. Pronouns are the sort of thing I need to master to succeed on my oral exam.

Unlove - Reid and I say, “I love you” before we go to sleep. She will often expand on this. We will love each other always, even if we don’t want to play together, even if we are old and she is a mama with babies of her own. In fact, we will love each other even after we are “died”, which I always note will be a long, long time from now. Reid summarizes with the following, “We will never unlove each other.” She is right, at least for my part and I hope for hers as well. I know that the pre-teen and teenage years are said to be full of conflict (though I seem to have more or less forgotten this from my younger years) but I’m confident that my mama love will withstand them. I will never unlove Reid.

Inter-upt - (emphasis on the second syllable) this is the case of a word interrupted if ever there was one. Reid will say, “Don’t inter-upt me! That’s wude!” (The initial Rs are still missing in action.) I usually hear this when I’m asking her to do something for the umpteenth time and she is talking about something else and ignoring my request completely. I know that interrupting is a behaviour that the teachers are working on eliminating at school but I feel justified. What to do?

Pardon me versus excuse me - Reid is interested in these expressions. When her sensibilities have been offended, she will sometimes ask for the regret to be expressed as “Pardon me …” and sometimes she wants to hear “Excuse me …”, both with full excuses to follow, and other times she wants to hear both. You’d think that I’m a burping, farting swine but that’s not the case. Lately, she has decided that “excuse me” is preferable because it’s more polite. I pressed her on this line of reasoning but she couldn’t explain her reason for finding “pardon me” lacking. Perhaps she is corrected at school. I’m an “Oh, pardon me” person from a way back and it may be too late for me to change my ways. After all I’m still working on accepting different ways of hanging the toilet paper roll.

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