The Thing's the Thing

Dear Diary,
I am wondering what is happening to the brain cells of my family members.  Are they vanishing because we are nearing the end of the school year, the finish line looming before us, waiting to be crossed at break-neck speed -- except we checked our brains out at the last mile marker?

For example, I recently overheard a statement from daughter #2 the other day that went something like this:  "You need to get the thingy-thing and put it over there on the thing."  (To which daughter #3 would say, "I know, right?")

OK, that's cute the first time.
But saying "the thingy" or "the thingy-thing" is becoming the thing in her normal conversation.

A couple of asides:
1.  I actually understand what she means most of the time, and
2.  Hearing it several times a week has inspired me to change my "What?" to "Whaty-what?"  At least that's what the voice in my head wants to say.

I will use the phrase "totes adorbs" just to give my girls a reason to roll their eyes at me, but otherwise I try to use my middle-age brain cells to form a cohesive sentence most of the time.

However, some of the phonetic faux pas stories I have told my daughters over the years are coming back to bite me.  Recently, when sitting down to dinner, daughter #1 reminded me of one such story from when I was her age.  Her three-word statement was a dig at my story of mistaking the word ravishing for ravenous, which, at the time, made for quite the brouhaha when I announced exuberantly to the family at the dinner table, "I'm sooo ravishing!"

These are the things our families don't let us live down.  Even, apparently, after you have started your own.

OK, so I've migrated a little off topic, but just know that as the days get warmer and the count to the final day of school gets smaller, the brain cells in our household become neglected, which, I guess, is our way of preparing our minds and bodies for the lazy days of summer.

When all nouns get replaced by a creative form of the word "thing."

Linguistically yours,
LJ

Pie Charts and Tally Marks

Dear Diary,

It's all I can do to not raise my hand.

The second grade teacher asks a question about the picture chart.  "How many more pepperoni pizzas were made than cheese?"  The kids aren't getting it.  They raise their hands to answer but just can't quite figure it out. 

Ooooh. Pick me! Pick me! I know the answer! I think to myself. 

I love this math. It is so much fun!  I would love to be able to show the class how smart I am.

But this is not a flashback to my childhood.
This is now.
I am an adult.
An aide, sitting in a second grade classroom, watching a lesson about charts and graphs unfold on the overhead screen in front of me and 25+ eight-year-olds. 

And I want to raise my hand.

Silly, I know.

Thanks to my employment, I now spend a lot of time in first and second grade.

We are
counting coins
charting and tallying
telling time
watching plants grow from seeds
spelling homonyms
reading stories
subtracting three digit numbers
learning not to cut in line. 

Through all this activity I am realizing:

All I ever really need to know I learned by second grade. 

Have I ever used sine and cosine in my "real" life?  Nope.  But three digit subtraction sure comes in handy with my checkbook (and so does counting coins).  And it is always good to know which witch to write, right?

So, just in case the teacher gets tired of hearing wrong answers, and one day I hear,
"Mrs. LJ, what is the noun in that sentence?"

I'll be ready.
'Cuz I've already been through second grade, and I'll know.

Precociously yours,
LJ