A Quick Story of Initials

This is a short story about my son. Well, truthfully, it's more about his teacher, or at last how clever she is. We're all really big fans of her's here, my son, wife, and I. I hope this short story will explain a little of why.

As usual, though, I have to give a little background.

My son has been playing with language lately. Testing out words and rhymes and new usages. There have been some amazing inventions from him, but also some pushing of limits. He's said a few curse words (honestly, I have no idea where he might have heard them...), but I've nipped that in the bud.

Instead he's used non-curse words, like "eyeball" and "toilet," as curse words. (A very complicated spot for me since I don't want to discourage using new words even when I know exactly what he's up to.) But more than that, he's managed to skirt the edges of words I'd rather he not use but can't quite bring myself to come down on him about.

Case in point, he declares things are BS. He uses only the initials and his contextual usage is flawless. This makes it hard for me to get too upset about it. I'm pretty sure he doesn't even know what the initials are supposed to stand for.

So he's been doing this language play at school as well. Again, I don't want to misrepresent this. Most of this is great learning potential and showing the world that -- surprise, surprise -- my son has great facility for language.

But then one day at school, he declared something to be BS.

The teacher glossed over it, but the other students had to know. "Teacher, teacher...what's BS?"

Without missing a beat, with nary a batted eyelid of hesitation, my son's fantastic kindergarten teacher responds, "Baloney Sandwich."

I have no idea if she invented that or heard it elsewhere and I'm the only one who doesn't know about it because I'm a heathen who will just say the dirty words. Either way, the wife and I love it so much we say it all the time now. My friend Jeff has started saying it to see how long before it comes back to him.

That's an inspired bit of teaching right there and an addition to my own vernacular that I can't get enough of. So thank you, Miss Awesometeacher!

Hopefully this has brought a smile to your face, dear reader. This knowledge will also help you understand an upcoming blog series title, so it's a doubly useful post! And that's...