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The Newsletter >
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 it means, “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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