smarty pants

Did you know? Kids really know everything!

Kindergartner: What are you going to name your baby?
Amy: (divulges real names for boy and girl that remain top secret)
Other Kindergartner: Those aren't very good names.

Another Kindergartner: Sometimes people look fat, and sometimes people look pregnant.
Amy: Yep, it's true.
Another Kindergartner: Are you fat or pregnant?

Pre-schooler: What's in your stomach?
Amy: What do you think is in my stomach?
Pre-schooler: A ball.
Amy: Close. A baby.
Pre-schooler: No, it's a ball. (Then proceeds to try to stick his grubby little paws up my shirt, as if to pull out the beach ball I have hidden underneath.)

(While given sample directions for a 5-paragraph persuasive essay)
Amy: So, say you think college basketball is the best thing on Earth, and one of the reasons you think it's so great is because it has the best coaches. So, you need to come up with three reasons why college basketball coaches are so great.
Fourth Grader: You know, it's called NCAA basketball.

I also enjoy when kids tell me I say things incorrectly, which kind of happens a lot.

(While talking about ice cream.)
Amy: I like caramel syrup on my ice cream. (Pronounced: KAR-uh-mel)
Entire Fourth Grade Class: Ha, ha! It's caramel. (Pronounced: KAHR-mul.)
Amy: Um, no, actually it's KAR-uh-mel. You can look it up in the dictionary.

Amy: Please get out your research projects. (Pronounced Ri-SURCH)
Entire Classes, several grade levels: Ha, ha! It's research. (Pronounced: REE-surch.)
Amy: Hmm. Either is right. But, I say research.


The whole thing with pronunciation is particularly interesting, as one of the most treasured books in the Davis-Ross household is Charles Harrington Elster's The Big Book of Beastly Mispronunciations. We call it "The Beastly," and have on occasion been known to say, "to The Beastly," with finger outstretched, as if we were headed "to the Bat Cave" or "to the Mystery Machine."

The Beastly is awesome, if only because the author has limited tolerance for some common mispronunciations. For example, see this hilarious take on mischievous:

Mischievous: MIS-chi-vus. Three syllables, stress on the first.

Mischievous is subject to two beastly mispronunciations: mis-CHEE-vus and, more often, mis-CHEE-vee-us. Both place the accent on the wrong syllable; the latter adds an erroneous syllable to the word. OED 2 (1989) says, "The stressing on the second syllable was common lin literature until about 1700; it is now dialectical, vulgar, and jocular." Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary 10 (1993) dubs the second-syllable accent "nonstandard" but notes that "our pronunciation files contain modern attestations" of mis-CHEE-vee-us "ranging from dialect speakers to Herbert Hoover." That's not much of a range, in my humble opinion. If Hoover is your model for cultivated speech, I feel for you. I'll stick with the majority of educated Americans who say MIS-chi-vus, thank you. (Elster 1999: 257-258)

The Beastly even has its own special place, in the pile of baby books. Somehow, it seems appropriate.