Heard around the house
Doing spelling words with my son.
Me: Garlic
My son: *spells garlic*
Me: Segment
My son: *spells segment*
Me: chlamydia
My son: That’s not one of my words.
My wife: Really, that’s what you came up with?
Me: It’s a hard word. The one time I had to spell it, I had to look it up.
My wife: *Rolls eyes* (probably because you can’t put hyperlinks into conversation)
Me: Segment.
My son: *spells segment*
Me: didgeridoo
My son: That’s not even a word.
Me: Yeah, it is. It’s a wind instrument that Australian aborigines came up with.
My son: It’s not one of my spelling words.
Me: Oh, yeah. Misplace
My son: *spells misplace*
Me: Antidisestablishmentarianism
My son: *blinks*
Me: It’s a word.
My son: But I don’t have to spell it.
September 20th, 2013 at 8:24 am
That’s just supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!
September 20th, 2013 at 8:47 am
Save that last one for a civics quiz; its spelling is comparatively irrelevant.
September 20th, 2013 at 10:41 am
Heh. Your kids and mine could start a support group.
September 20th, 2013 at 10:48 am
“Antidisestablishmentarianism” was one of the first words that my eldest ever wanted to learn to spell. She was very proud of herself when she managed it.
September 20th, 2013 at 10:49 am
Oops, that isn’t my website 🙁 (Forgot what I had copied to clipboard).
September 20th, 2013 at 11:27 am
I admit to throwing in random ones when practicing with the #1 kid, but I don’t usually take it to level 9.
Good on you for being a good parent.
September 20th, 2013 at 12:25 pm
You should have thrown in “shilohuette”?
September 20th, 2013 at 12:30 pm
Cliff, he should throw in the definition too…outline of a Neil Diamond song?
September 20th, 2013 at 12:38 pm
Did he take the MAPS? Mine just did. We don’t have the results yet but we know she did good because she’s a genius … err … because she got to where they were asking her the meanings of foreign words.
September 20th, 2013 at 2:03 pm
“Stop fucking around, dad!”
September 20th, 2013 at 2:30 pm
And I thought I was the only one who tortured my children this way. BTW it was hilarious when I got a pissed call from a teacher when she asked about the 2 types of new (knew vs new) in class and my son said what about the third one. According to my son, she had no idea and when he told her it was gnu an antelope type animal she said it wasn’t a word until he showed her the dictionary. His smile when he got home was larger then his head. Ahhh the making of a self thinking man….
September 20th, 2013 at 3:15 pm
phenicks – said teacher sounds like an agnustic … (agnustic: someone who doesn’t know quite what to believe in about gnus) … as contrasted with a gnuphobe: someone grammar-challenged who believes that no gnus is good gnus …
September 20th, 2013 at 3:55 pm
I know I’ve heard Antidisestablishmentarianism somewhere on TV or in a movie before but can’t seem to find it anywhere. Monty Python? Young Ones?
September 20th, 2013 at 4:23 pm
September 20th, 2013 at 5:31 pm
As the father of one kid who hated school and worked to quickly get out of it (graduating a year early in the top 10 of the year before hers) and another kid who hated school and passive aggressively slobbed through HS and is in year 5 of his undergrad degree, all I can say is it takes all kinds to make up this funny old world, and it would be pretty boring if we were all the same.
Which is why you should also throw in truly made up words when quizzing your kids. Syzygy is cool, but serenduppity is better.
Serenduppity? An accidental but advantageous exhibition of uppityness, I guess.
September 20th, 2013 at 5:42 pm
Try “subtle”. Quality over quantity.
That silent “b” was a not-so-suttle miscue that nearly knocked me out of contention in a sixth-grade spelling bee.
September 20th, 2013 at 7:35 pm
Guy, you’re probably thinking of Blackadder.
“Anti distinctly minty…….”
September 21st, 2013 at 12:20 am
My daughter is so happy to find out that she’s not the only victim of this type of spelling study.
September 21st, 2013 at 5:38 am
Well done sir! 🙂
September 21st, 2013 at 11:53 am
Your son grows up to plot revenge upon your age-ravaged body, don’t say I didn’t warn you.
September 22nd, 2013 at 2:07 am
Your son will probably be in his forties before he realizes what an awesome house it was in which he was raised.
Typical conversation between my brother and his then elementary aged son.
“Dad. What’s rain?”
“Well that’s god’s tears.”
“oh.”
Thinks.
” But why is God crying?”
“I don’t know. Probably something you did.”
September 22nd, 2013 at 4:47 am
#12 Alastor
Check out Gary Gnu and the No Gnus is Good Gnus show …
September 22nd, 2013 at 5:55 pm
My eighth graders:
“How do you spell phenomenal?”
Me: “P. H.”
Them: “No! I mean phenomenal.”
Me: “P. H.”
Them: “I said PHENomenal. It has an F sound!”
Me: “Phone.”
Them: “…”
September 23rd, 2013 at 10:03 am
“I knew the new gnu was coming to the zoo”. My son’s a dead man next round 🙂