Friday, April 11, 2008

Snippets of conversation with Youngest Son

I'd gone to pick up Youngest Son at school. His baseball game was rained out yesterday. But Youngest Son hung around school anyway, working the concession stand for a volleyball game -- and mooching his dinner thereby.

Youngest Son was not optimistic about the prospects of getting his games in on Saturday either. "I heard they're talking about snow," he told me.

Still, there was a bright side to this meteorological gloom. Youngest Son has been invited to two different dances this weekend, on Friday and Saturday, and if there's no doubleheader Saturday morning, there's no danger of the coaches calling on Friday night to make sure he's home in time for curfew. He explained this to me as we drove home last night through the storm.

"So," I said, "a rainout would leave you with more time in which to pursue your terpsichorean revels."

There was a silence from the passenger seat. Finally, Youngest Son spoke. "Dad," he said, "use English."

"I did," I said. "Terpsichorean is a perfectly fine English word. It is derived from Terpsichore, from Greek mythology, the Muse associated with dancing."

"Da-ad!"

"All I said was if you are for sure rained out Saturday you'll have more time to spend at the dance."

"There," said Youngest Son, "was that so hard?"

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well here's wishing for snow-for your son's sake!

Ralph said...

Well, it has been said that lawyers use a different dictionary.

This conversation, of course, might inspire your son to work hard and and learn lots of big, impressive words in school just in case his baseball career doesn't quite pan out...

Patti said...

I always learn something from you, Mr. Curm.

thank you!

landgirl said...

Hee, hee, Cur, can you name the rest of the 9 muses? No fair looking it up....

Shelby said...

another fine word of the day..

Julia Phillips Smith said...

Hi - I've popped over from Mimi Lennox's blog. I saw your 'Curmudgeon' in the comments and couldn't resist. Doesn't Youngest Son know you by now? Or is he just fun to tease?

Kacey said...

Terpsichorean Revels? Lovely, just lovely!

TroyBoy said...

Poor kid. :-)