TTT - The Holy Ghost, a Tomcat, and a Misplaced Prepositional Phrase

~ David at the Frontier Culture Museum last week

We have a friend, Kevin the Painter, who likes to tease a lot; and as a result, he himself gets teased in return.  I think if Gary Chapman ever revises his love languages book, he'll have to add Teasing as #7 (right behind Food, which is #6...Jeff knows that if he really wants to show me his love, he can bring me a carton of blackberries and let me eat them ALL BY MYSELF).  :)  Anyway, we've eaten with Kevin at Cracker Barrel a few times; and you know how they put all that old stuff--farming tools, signs, family pictures, etc.--on the walls?  Well, there's this old portrait of a stern-looking couple on the wall at our Cracker Barrel, right by the table that we always seem to get; and Jeff started teasing Kevin that the people in the picture were his parents.  My boys haven't let the joke die yet.  That led into this conversation:
David (age 5) to Kevin:  When my mom and dad die, do you think they'll get their picture up in Cracker Barrel?
Kevin (age 54):  Yes, and I want to be the one to take the picture.
Josiah (age 8):  You won't be alive any more.
David:  You'll be with the Holy Ghost!
Only with Kevin could I let my boys have this kind of conversation!

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One evening around the supper table, David blurted out this question about his 2 year-old brother, "What do you think Tobin will be when he grows up?"    Jeff and I and my parents were all wondering how to answer that, "Uh, maybe he'll be a fireman...or a doctor...or a construction worker...or a...?"  But then David added, "A tomcat?"  What???  All we could do was laugh.

Turns out he was thinking about his own experience of playing soccer this season for the Cheetahs; and he was assuming that when Tobin gets a little older, he'll want to play soccer, too.  David was asking which team we thought Tobin would be assigned to.  It had absolutely nothing to do with occupation, but the way he phrased the question made all of us adults think in one direction...while his own thoughts were traveling in a different one!

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Jeff's mom flew in from California recently for a four-week stay with us; and the boys' excitement, in the days leading up to her arrival, just grew and grew.  When we pulled into the parking lot at the airport, Josiah said, "My heart feels like it's going to burst!"  David one-upped his brother by exclaiming, "My heart feels like it's going to come out of my tongue!"

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David LOVES affection.  Spoken words of love, physical touches of love--both of these make him thrive; and you can almost see him soaking it in like water into a sponge and positively glowing as a result.  Every once in a while, he and I play the "I Love You More" game, where one of us says, "I love you so much," and the other says, "I love you more," and the first one says, "No, I love you more," and back and forth--a silly, but endearing, argument.  One day recently as we went around and around, I thought, "I'll clinch this argument once and for all."  I told him triumphantly, "I loved you before you were born!"  Undaunted, he retorted gleefully, "I loved you before you were born!!"  Hmmm...and how exactly is that possible, wise guy?  :)

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The next two are not exactly Tiny Talk Tuesday conversations--more like Not-So-Tiny Talk Tuesday.  But they are spoken things from my household that made me laugh, so I'll break all the rules (sorry, Mary!) and include them here.  :)

For those who don't regularly read my blog and don't know this already, my parents live just down the hill from us and eat supper with us nearly every evening.  Here's a fact that very few of you know:  my parents consume huge quantities of vitamins (and have for years...that's literally how I came about!...but that's another story), so every evening at supper, they pull out a pill bottle for each of them that holds their allotted vitamins--and a few "regular" pills--for that meal.  One evening, a pill was randomly discovered on the table at the end of the meal, and it wasn't immediately clear whose it was.  I couldn't tell if it was "real" medicine or a vitamin, but apparently Dad quickly ascertained that it was a vitamin and he said to Mom, "It might be mine, but you can have it."  Generous of him, wasn't it?  I thought to myself, "That's such an old people thing to do!"  I don't consider my parents old!!  But watching them made me think ahead to the days when Jeff and I, Lord willing, will be an old couple together:  missing teeth perhaps, maybe a little hard of hearing, tottering around with canes.  I want to have the kind of easy companionship that can spot a roll-away pill and say, "It might be mine, but you can have it!"

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This one points out my own shortcomings.  First, let me say that I LOVE grammar, and I entered college as an English major (and exited with a music degree, but that's beside the point).  Jeff takes special pleasure in catching me making grammatical mistakes; and I sure made a doozy the other night.  He was wrestling with the boys on the couch; and I, knowing that intense wrestling/tickling sessions sometimes lead to a loss of bladder control in young bodies, asked, "Does anyone need to go to the bathroom on the couch?"  Oh, the danger of misplaced prepositional phrases!  Let me try that again:  Does anyone on the couch need to go to the bathroom?  Ah, yes.  Much better.  And please don't take my earlier question literally!  ;-)

Check out Mary at Not Before 7 for more Tiny Talk Tuesday.