One of the most infamous stories in my family is that of my first words to my maternal grandparents. My pop-pop had a habit of calling all little girls "Pumpkin." Honestly, now I think it's quite endearing, and I partially regret my steps against it, but when I was very little, I HATED being called anything other than Anne (R-dot). (My mom would like to interject that Pop-pop was calling my Annie, which I do hate and would prefer people to refrain from using in reference to me. That is all. Moving on...) Therefore, the first time I worked up the nerve to talk in their presence, I walked in and said, "MY NAME IS ANNE!," to which they replied, "...okay." They called me Anne ever since then.
Well, I've posted several times about the kid who always yells, "TOE-MAY-TOE!" whenever he sees me. I've taken to calling him Tomato, as a type of a term of endearment. It occurred to me that he seemed to be slightly disgruntled at its use, and I tried to tone it down, but it slipped out today, since that is what I associate him with. Being outside of school grounds at the time, he turned to me and rather forcefully said, "Teacher, my English name is Brian. No more Tomato." (I can't help smiling, even as I write this.) He then turned to his friend and said, "His English name is Vic. No more Tomato." By this point, I was laughing out loud, but trying to control myself.
"Okay," I said. "No more Tomato. See you later, Brian, Vic."
I can't even feel bad about it, and I really don't feel bad about giving my grandparents a hard time anymore (for several years, I had worried that I had offended them in some way), because now I am certain that they were more amused than anything else.
Do you have any fun stories like that? I'd love to hear them, as I love to laugh.
(I'm including Thriller in the viewable section of this post, as Michael Jackson is still ranked higher than JT in my book, although not by much, but until JT's genius outranks MJ's, this is the way it will be.)
Oh, and by the way... Brian turned to me as I was leaving and said, "I do really like tomatoes, though." "I do too, Brian." :)
PS. Don't forget to be praying for my Compassion Kid.
Haha! That is classic! I remember when you did that and it's funny to see it come back at you. I wish I had known that you had thought you offended them. I could have told you that you didn't. It is one of the many amusing stories about us grandkids that is passed around. I love the story, along with the one about me being so talkative. They loved that story. Sometimes Pop-pop would call you Pumpkin just to hear your reaction again. :) You were always so cute when you got mad and told them what your real name was. ;)
ReplyDeleteHmm... There's part of me that realized that. After a while, I just regretted it because I secretly really liked terms of endearment and wanted one for myself, just so long as it wasn't Annie... or anything else ending in the -ie sound, really. :)
ReplyDeleteAlthough you do make that sound sound good... it's just not for me. ;)