By ROD WALTON Staff Writer on Aug 2, 2012, at 4:28 PM Updated on 8/02 at 4:28 PM
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I’m a word guy. I like the sound of unique utterances, or even malapropisms that speak to larger truths. I think Oscar Wilde, Bill Cosby, Yogi Berra and Erma Bombeck are all geniuses.
Sometimes my brilliant kids say things that catch the ear. For instance, my wife was going through a vegetarian phase recently and tried to foist some green dish on my son. His response was instant and brutal. “Yuck,” he said. “That tastes the way firecrackers smell.”
No great writer could be prouder of such a turn of phrase. This vegetarian status was brought on when the wife and I survived something called the 21-day Daniel Fast, based on Daniel 10 in the Bible. We lost weight, lost patience and ended it with a whole lot of beef, chicken and fish at a Chinese buffet.
From beginning to end, however, the phase inspired desperation in our children simply hankering for their chicken nuggets and sugar-stuffed goodies. Our youngest daughter achieved Bombeckian verbal heights of fancy when she recoiled at another junk-food denial one day.
“That’s fine for you,” she said. “But I still have a whole lifetime of crappy eating ahead of me.”
Touche!
There’s also the wonderful quotations brought on by the childhood immersions into popular culture. Our eldest was not even three years old when a neighbor asked her a question about her age and she responded, without delay: “I’m 16 and I don’t need a governess.”
Wow, was she watching too much “The Sound of Music” or what?
Our boy was fixated on pirate culture one summer. He would wear the headgear and keep a sword nearby at nearly all times. One afternoon the wife accidentally walked into a bathroom where he was, eh, indisposed.
“State your intentions,” the 5-year-old pirate said with utmost seriousness, scabbard by his side and a hint of danger in the eyes.
I’m not sure I’ve written anything funnier or more memorable in 26 years of journalism. OK, I haven’t.
Leave it to the amateurs.
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