The One Word Wonder Boy * April 24, 2008

Dear Zippity Readers,

    He’s our daughter’s one word wonder boy. It’s Conner and he’s two. He can and has said a lot of words.  He just chooses not to repeat himself. Instead he has invented one, handy, dandy, all purpose word which he uses for, well . . . everything.  The wonder word is Dis.

    If he says, “Dis?” a question mark in his voice, his hands outstretched, palms up, he is actually asking, “I just tried to wash my hands in the water that shoots out of the door in the refrigerator, and did you know that it would make this giant pool of swamp mud on the kitchen floor?”

    If he says, “Dis! Dis! Dis!” with his finger pointed and stabbing in accusation at the family dog, it means, “That idiot dog just stole the bundle of 42 sticks that I was about to stuff in your microwave.”

    When he says, “Oh no . . . disssss . . .” while rubbing his sister on the head he's really saying, “Oh goodness, cracking Zoe on the head with a brick wasn’t as much fun as I thought that it would be.”

    Conner can also make pretty realistic gunshot noises while  pretending to use a hymnal as a rifle scope—in church—during the service.  He can also say, “Poop,” and “Cinderella.”

    I keep trying to reassure my daughter that it’s a boy-thing—she remains skeptical.         

    So I tell her about my one word wonder boy. No, I’m not talking about Conner. I’m talking about my husband of thirty years, who has managed to boil all of life’s experiences and expressions of verbal communication down to a handful of words. No, handful would be pushing it.  Mostly, it’s one word—one good word.

    I can say, “Hey, I just won the door prize for excellence in the field of dancing on the head of a pin dressed as a spinning angel.”

    And he will say, “Good.”

    Or I can say, “Sherwood, I think our next door neighbor just declared war on Osceola county. He’s planting land mines in the no-man’s land between his property and Kissimmee Park Road.”
   
    And he will say, “Hmmm! Good.”

    Whereupon I will say, “No, not good. Astounding. Astonishing. Flabbergasting. Staggering. Stupefying.”

    And he will say, “Good words that mean good!”

    Boys like sticks and bricks—words not so much. Conner talks. I’ve heard him say, “Give me the scissors,” with my own ears. He just won’t repeat it.  Instead, he takes the scissors from Zoe and starts to try and cut his own eyebrows off, while poking the dog with a stick.  It’s a boy-thing.  Sigh. 

    You want words, call me.

    Linda (The Bombastic) Zern     

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