The very idea of texting your mother…
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You tell me if you get this: a student gets up to leave at the end of this morning's class, and casually turns back to me and says, “Well teetle, I guess! Have a good weekend!” Teetle? Do you know what that means? I didn’t either. I asked her to repeat it. “I said ‘teetle.’” “Do you mean like toodle-loo? Is that what you’re trying to say? As in, See you later, toodle-loo?” “I would never say that. That sounds dumb.” There was a lull as we tried to figure out how to communicate what, at first glance, appeared to be nothing but a simple, closing remark as she...
He'd just always wanted a hearse, he said.
U.L. and I like to take Sunday drives, after dinner, each week. There's no rush to this ritual. We enjoy a long dinner with the rest of the family; we gossip, we share news (even the made-up News, an old habit we used to do when I was younger, that's found some way to stick, even to this day). What you do is, you mute the TV, you guess at what's being said by looking at the graphics, and then you tell your version. It was quite a shock, for instance, when I realized that Bush had actually been re-elected, and even greater still,...
"I'm not so sure that shrimps is correct."
...if you know me - and soon enough you will, I hope - you know that I'm a bit obsessed with language and pronunciation, etcetera. For instance, I flat-out refuse to drag the word comparative over four separate vowels and/or syllables depending on which part of the country you live in. Instead, I just say it shortly and sweetly, like this, comparative: emphasis on the first syllable, omitting the middle "a," and running the rest of it together under the "r" sound). It sounds more intelligent, I think. I am quite a strong advocate for doing all I can to...
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