The junior cheeseburger, and other distortions of the media

When I was pregnant with Jacob, Josh had a vision of our future, and it went something like this:

We’d be at a restaurant, sometime in the future with young Jacob in tow. When it came time to order, Josh would say something like, “And for the little one here, we’ll have the junior cheeseburger.”

His vision hasn’t turned out quite the way we planned, seeing as we are raising a child that is no shrinking violet. Not sure how that happened when the simple act of making a phone call to a stranger makes my palms sweat.

Anyhoo.

When we eat out these days, it is for breakfast, and it usually goes something like this:

Server: Good morning, would you like something to dr---
Jacob: Mickey Mouse pancake pease!!

Even the one time we went out for lunch in the last six months, Jacob kept saying “Handeburg? Handeburg?”(Hamburger) like Rain Man while the flustered server tried to list off the specials, until we translated his order.

Anyway, somehow this vision has morphed in such a way that I now call Cody “The Junior Cheeseburger,” as in “Can you take the junior cheeseburger for a diaper change?”

My brain does this sometimes, just totally distorts stuff where I start with an idea and end up with a random nickname for our son. Like when I used to tell the story about how my father was accidentally shot by one of his friends at an eighth grade dance. Nine months later Dad was hit by a car, and the driver happened to be the priest of the boy who had shot him. Only when I tell the story, it goes something like this: My dad was shot by his friend, who was so upset that he called his priest, who then came to the dance and ran over my dad.

When I do this, Josh says, “Yeah, the media can distort things sometimes.” Basically my brain is like The National Enquirer. And while this was once kind of embarrassing, The National Enquirer is now up for a Pulitzer, so boo-yah!

Semantics

Dear E-Surance,

Given the fact that you seem to have the budget for daily radio ads on KCBS, I bet you have the budget for a $50/hour fact checker. If you had decided to spend the big bucks, you would have learned that “-itis” is a Greek suffix that among other things, means “inflammation.” So your new ad campaign about “Walletitis” is about inflammation of the wallet, not shrinking you silly geese. Fortunately for you, I’m probably the only one out there who thinks about these things.

Sincerely,

Monkey Brain

Semantics

By my count, the house that I grew up in contained 24 rooms and 5.5 bathrooms, from the basement to the third floor, not including closets. In sharp contrast, I choose to live in a house that is less than 2,000 square feet (less than half of 20 Maple’s first floor alone) but that’s for another time.

Like me, my mother is a lover of words. So in addition to the usual words (bathroom, kitchen, bedroom, etc) the lexicon of my childhood home included a powder room, a front hall closet, back hall closet, vestibule, butler’s pantry, parlor and library. My siblings and I re-named these rooms by their use, so the “back hall closet,” which housed soccer balls, shin guards, tennis rackets and balls and other sports accessories was called the “sports closet.”

We are WASPs, so as you can imagine, this resulted in some fiery showdowns:
Mom: “Will you put your ice skates/cleats/racket in the back hall closet?”
Child: “You mean the sports closet?”
Mom: “Yes, the BACK HALL closet.”

Recently, my brother-in-law was looking for something in our house; let’s just call it a hoosywhatsy for the sake of this story.
Me: “Oh sure, it’s in the media room”
B-i-L: “You mean the tv room?”
Me: “Uh, yeah, the media room.”

Ahem.

Hello, Kettle? This is Pot. You’re black.

Citizen's Arrest: Semantics Police

Hey BabyCenter.com,

I just bought a spaghetti squash, and it happened to be next to the mangoes. And my friend, those mangoes were half the size of the spaghetti squash, if that. Now I don't know what kind of hormones your mangoes are smoking, but I'm going to have to go with my friend Trader Joe on this one.

Sincerely,

Keiki's Mama