Thursday, January 8, 2009

It's come to my attention that my family and I do not speak like normal people

This was brought home to me today when I went to exchange some foundation at Sephora. I asked the girl whose eyes were shockingly green (and I am not talking about the irises, but the eye lids and the surrounding ocular region) to help me find a liquid foundation. "Well," she said," what are you looking for in a foundation?" to which I replied "I am rendered helpless by the dazzling array of options."

Who speaks this way?

Well actually, Ricardo does. He was at Lenscrafters while I was at Sephora. He went to get his sunglasses realigned, there was just the slightest hint of a wobble to them. But he found them comfortable enough to say, "Let's declare victory. They're done." Then he had to buy some lens cleaner. The rednecky woman pointed him to the shelf and asked "What kind?" to which he replied, "Oh, do you have a vast array?"

Which begs the question as to why we speak this way, whether we can stop and if we should.

While waiting at the home medical supply store for some medical supplies, we learned the word sphygmomanometer. Then we spent the next 40 minutes coming up with sentences using sphygmomanometer. For example, "Excuse me nurse, but you will need the sphygomanometer with the greatest capacity if you want an accurate measure of my blood pressure." and "I seem to have misplaced my sphygmomanometer and so I am unable to take your blood pressure manually." as well as "Pardon me, Home Medical Supply Vendor, but do you have a child sized sphygmomanometer in blue?" and topped off by "My home blood pressure monitor obviates the need for a sphygmomanometer".

And it's so bad that our child has begun to speak bizarrely as well. He'll ask what beverage we would like for dinner. He uses the word "delectable" to describe black beans and refers to the plans of villains as diabolical.

Is there something wrong with us? I mean aside from the patently obvious? What are we doing to our child by continuing to speak in this insane manner?

3 comments:

Ricardo said...

Perhaps someone will suggest something ameliorative?

Zoë said...

That would obviate our current need for obfuscative language?

Katharine Beights said...

Uuummm...you guys JUST realized this?? Why do you think Kassia and I enjoy you so much? It does make me think that you would be better at scrabble though...so that's a little disappointing.