Things kids say.
How do children manage to take an innocent comment, relay it out of context, possibly misinterpret the meaning or mishear a word or two, and turn it into a source of crippling embarrassment?
A few years ago I was looking around a large DIY superstore for ant poison. I had my daughter with me and while we travelled around the store we were talking about her pet hamsters (we had a lot of them due to a gender mistake…). She was about four years old at the time. Everything had gone well up until the moment I was paying for the ant powder and an aerosol insecticide I had picked up. Just as I was handing over the money, my daughter piped up and told the girl on the checkout “Daddy’s going to kill the hamsters!”
Now there is no reply to that without immediately seeming suspicious, and the instant you think ‘If I deny that too quickly or firmly it will arouse suspicion’, you are lost! I denied it and tried to laugh it off, a little too nervously I thought and I felt my face redden. It was too late, the idea was sewn, now anything I said would just make me seem more guilty. I was forced to hurry away clutching two containers of poison, looking embarrassed knowing that the staff member who served me now thinks I am some evil poisoner of hamsters.
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Some of my favourite phrases my children have said:
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“Mummy’s like a lady, but bigger.”
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“Dad, do I have to go to sleep? I’m too tired!”
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Said by my daughter to my son: “I’ll be the zoo keeper who looks after the animals and you be the one who looks for strangers. If you see any strangers coming you have to kill them.”
(Mental note:- Don’t let my kids consider zoo management as a career)
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“Don’t make the policeman angry, Daddy, or he’ll come and break our house.”
(I wasn’t scared of our local Police force, now I’m not so sure!)
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“When I’m as big as you, Daddy, you’ll be dead.”
(Cheering thought, son…)
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“My other mummy said I could do that.”
(Other mummy? Now I’m scared!)
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“If you ran over that cat, Dad, your Dad would be proud of you.”
(I’m not sure my father’s dislike of cats goes that far!?)
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“Can I sit next to the fat lady, Mum?” said whilst holding the lady’s sleeve.
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Grandfather: “So what have you been doing this week?”
Grandson (age 4): “I’m wearing underpants!”
(Just to explain he normally wears underpants, but he’d recently become aware of that word instead of “pants”)
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My 4 year old son recently said this to my father-in-law: “When he’s grumpy Daddy shakes the baby.”
By which he means that when the baby is crying (grumpy) Daddy bobs him up and down. But phrased as it was I instantly sounded like some kind of baby abuser with temper issues. And it’s another one of those ones that as soon as you protest your innocence you begin to sound guilty.
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I just hope that kids get less embarrassing as they grow up?!?
