Words - blah, blah, blah...

Catching up on some things that have happened sort of recently....

A while ago (hmmm, could it have been a year ago now? Anyway, quite a while ago) Elie saw a fly swatter and asked, "What is that?" Lori said, "It's a fly swatter. You use it to kill flies."

About a week later, Elie was with Lori's mom when she bought two fly swatters. Elie asked her something like why did she need two or something and Lori's mom said something like, "To get you with them."

And Elie got all wide-eyed and asked, "Do you want to kill me?"

Now...I don't know what she really thought, but it occurred to me yesterday while I was mowing that I tend to talk to and around my kids like they're adults - like they get irony or sarcasm or humor or whatever when they hear it... And they don't. At least not always.

I can probably say to a friend (within earshot of the girls) if they are misbehaving, "You want to take some kids home with you?" And they know that I'm kidding, that I don't really want to get rid of them (I know that because we've talked about it). But had I said that two years ago, would Elie have been scarred by that?

And all of that brings a couple other things to mind.

First...I just had this conversation with Lori the other day. Sarcasm - man, I can be downright caustic with words. And I said to Lori, "When is sarcasm ever helpful?" I mean, think about it. Why do we use it? To hurt, right? To cut. And I've been sarcastic with my 7 and 9 year old kids (remember I said I tend to think they hear like adults? Well they don't - and their filters for sarcasm and not being hurt by it are not nearly as hardened and thick as mine...and I need to freaking remember that sometimes...) And it isn't just Lori and the girls I need to watch how I treat with words...

Second... saying what we mean. Okay, this is pretty obvious, right? But my favorite quote of the past couple weeks was, "Never try to figure out what a woman means by listening to what she says." I mean, how many times has a husband asked his wife, "What's wrong?" And she says...wait for it...., "Nothing." But while that's a cliche (and potentially offensive, yeah, yeah - take it up with my supervisors...argh) statement, the reality is NONE of us always say what we mean. We often obfuscate (heh, love that "Car Talk" word) and dance around and pretext and all that... And, again, I learn from my children that I have to really say what I mean - or they don't get it. And, really, are any of us "grown-ups" all that much better at figuring it all out? Maybe, but why should we have to?