In what will probably be one of the shortest blog posts I ever do, let me first introduce today’s topic for the NAIEW Words Matter Blog Challenge:

Words can be mangled, misused, or misunderstood. What is your funniest example of mangling, misuse, or misunderstanding?

My funniest example of mangling words comes from the mouth of my child when he was two years old, just learning to speak and count. He had a logic about it — thinking the opposite of “okay” was “nokay” for instance. But I had the hardest time teaching him the numbers beyond 10 and before 20. After that, it was all logical. However, as far as my Darling Son was concerned, the numbers after 10 should have been “one-ty-one, one-ty-two, one-ty-three”, etc.

I have to admit, I didn’t have a good reason why that’s not how the numbers went. I believe it was the beginning of the end of me being the font of all wisdom.