When Stubbornness Comes Back To Bite You In The Butt, Sort Of.

From the time the Older Boy started to talk, there was speculation that he would become an attorney someday. The kid does not take no for an answer*. His persuasion skills have always been quite advanced for his age, and very annoying. Case one? Click here.

Case Two:
Back in the day, this toddler started picking up a phrase often used by Jim: “Smooth move, Ex Lax.”

Only one difference, though: he used to say “Smooth move, Back Slacks.”

It was hilarious. We told him he was saying it the wrong way and tried to get him to make the correction, but he wouldn’t do it, insisting that he was in the right.

To be completely honest here, Jim and I thought that his way was so funny that we became accustomed to using it interchangeably with the correct phrase.

Last week the boy came home from school (as you might recall, he’s a Junior in high school) and mentioned over dinner that he had said “Smooth move, Back Slacks” to somebody during a group project and got a teased incessantly by his friends.

And he didn’t know why.

We told him that he has been saying it wrong since he was about three or four and he asked us why we let him do that. When I explained that we tried to correct him but he wouldn’t listen and insisted that his way was correct, we chose to lose that battle because we thought it was hilarious.

After a flash of annoyance, he laughed with us and shrugged his shoulders, deciding that he wasn’t going to change a thing.

*Let me be perfectly clear. When I write that he doesn’t take “no” for an answer, I DO NOT mean discipline-wise. Just sayin’.

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11 Comments

  • Qweenie

    We have one of those stories….

    My kids have been calling Altoids Mints “Gut Breaths” since they were little. As far as we could figure at the time someone told them that Altoids give you ‘good breath’ and well they were little so it turned into “gut breath”…. now most of our extended family even calls them that…LOL

    These are just the kind of things that make me laugh so hard all these years later!

  • Dea

    LOL! Oh man, that is SO Joe – he isn’t wrong, we are. I love that he couldn’t figure out why he was teased. Priceless!!!

  • ♫ Spasm ♫

    LOLOLOL I have one like this, I keep thinking and even said to DH last night I htink she would make an EXCELLENT lawyers. You should hear her evidence she brings to the table when she was just trying to get some help with the dinner dishes. LOL

  • Momo Fali

    Sounds like something my mom would say! She is constantly making slight errors in phrases. It cracks me up!

  • Sue

    OK, here is a personal story…
    My parents used to use the word “hineysneeze” when someone farted. Until I was in high school or after, I always thought that it was some German word. (Yeah, Kat will like that) But really it meant hiney sneeze. Yeah, chalk one up for my smarts!
    I am glad that older boy can laugh at himself.

  • Michelle

    Hee hee… gotta love that. I’m impressed at how well he dealt with it. Good parenting there.

    And I always joked that I would teach my child that a word meant something else entirely just to see how old the kid would be before getting it right. I decided shortly after having the wee ones not to do that. But if the insist on calling it “breck-stick” who am I to correct them. Again.

    Hmm… my word today is gumcones. Interesting.