It’s Sunday night dinner. We’re having pasta, one of those meals I can cook providing there’s a jar of pesto in the pantry.
I haven’t spoken to an adult all day and have rarely spoken to a child, since Vivian is ill and William is in Lego-building mode.
I’m struggling with words, and my husband and I are discussing how we’re going to medicate Vivy for the night so she doesn’t hallucinate about detached arms floating around her head, like she did last night.
“I think we should put the hydrating machine in her room,” I say.
“The what?” my husband asks.
“The hydrating machine. I can’t remember the name for it.”
“That would be a humidifier,” he says.
“Right,” I say, laughing.
“It sounds like you’re discussing technology in the Victorian era,” he adds.
I laugh some more, trying not to snort fettuccine up my nose. “Does this mean I can channel Mr. Darcy?”
This time, he doesn’t mention that Jane Austen is technically pre-Victorian. He also ignores my thinly-veiled Colin Firth reference and launches into his next example. “Are you going to call your mom tonight on the electric talking box?”
“Nope,” I say, pausing to put words in some sort of logical order. “But I am going to write a personal diary entry on my magical typewriter.”
Feel free to leave some lexicon units in the comments below.
Any words you forget?
Any technological terms you can make pseudo-Victorian?
I do this ALL the time! My husband always asks if I’m feeling okay, and then he smirks. I feel like it’s rapidly getting worse with age.
I fear the same…
yep, happens often. i always say left when i mean right and the other way around. think it might be early-stage alzheimers.
I hope it’s normal. I’m still good with directions. But left and right?
When one repeatedly forget the names of things, it’s a sign that one is either under stress or getting old.
Happy Monday!
Who are you and what are you doing here? 😉
They call me the snowman. I make Canada white.
And by white, I mean the colour, not the ethnicity. Or lack there of. Eh?
Wanna touch my carrot?
The worst it ever happened to me was I called my work to talk to one of my co-workers – who I knew very well, had hung out with socially on a regular basis – and forgot her name. I also once forgot my address. As an adult.
Ha. After Christmas, I always forget the name of a student or two (out of 93). It’s momentary, but embarrassing.
My kids are learning my non-language,but now I know what a help these words are NOT. My three year old came up to me and asked,”Can you please help me find my hoosy-watts-it?!” I replied,” Ummm…okAY,Honey. What does it look like?” She says,frustrated,”I don’t know! It looks like– it!” ——We may have a language/communication issue in my house.
You have your own family vernacular, Jess! Fabulous.
OH I’ve forgotten what things are called so I usely call them that thinging..LOL Usely the kids just look at me like I’m crazy or something. I blame it on them that I forget name of things as I’ve got to keep all their importer dates in order.
Yes, we’re storing too much info. I’ll buy that theory.
Yup, this sounds like me on a daily basis and exactly how my husband usually responds, too when I do stuff like this. Totally relate!!
“Thingy” is a really good all purpose substitute word for whatever doesn’t come to mind. You know, the thingy, that thingy.
I want to hear more about the flying arms.
They freaked me out and I didn’t even see them.
You always make me smile, even when I’m having a crappy day.
Good thing I’m on my long soft reclining chair.
Now that I’m 45, I forget words all the…
Sorry, the idiot box went on for no reason.
Also, I forget when I was in the middle of a sentence.
May your crappy day end soon. Well, it’s 11 pm EST now, so I guess it’s ended. May tomorrow be better, Renzay!
No. I’m here. But it did get better. Latkes with sour cream can solve a lot of problems. 😉
Don’t worry about it, Leanne!
You use that thinking box of yours enough….
See, you’re not the only one who does it!
Good one.
I’m glad I wasn’t eating fettucini because I would have just snorted some up my nose.
I do this all the time. Not entirely related, but I just realized yesterday that I have NO idea how to spell Matthew McCoughnehay. <– I know THAT'S not right. If only there was some way I could look it up on this magical typewriter…
I do the same with Sarah McLaughlin/McLaughlan/McLaghlan.
This is so funny – glad to know I’m not the only who forgets words. One of my professors calls her husband’s Smartphone a “Magic Box” As in, “We’re lost aren’t we? Why don’t you punch some keys on that Magic Box of yours and get us out of here?”
Cracks me up, mostly because she is VERY serious and he is VERY serious and neither one seems like the type to use the term “Magic Box” with a straight face and yet…they do. God, I love people and words.
I love some of the new words we’ve added to the dictionary this year too: man cave, mash-up…all pretty visual. I think magic box is a good one to add in 2013.
I heard you had a “magic box.” 😉 LOL!
We were watching The Amazing Race one year and one of the young women looked up in the sky and asked her boyfriend “look at those, those flying things in the sky!” “You mean airplanes?” her boyfriend replied. My husband and I died laughing on the thing you stretch out on in the living room when you’re watching that box with the moving pictures in it. Pam
Reminds me of a scene in The Chrysalids. Too funny. Happy day, Pam!
When my daughter was just learning to talk, she invented names for objects that she didn’t know what they were instead of asking. Now it’s become a bit of a tradition, and no one bats an eyelash when I ask if they want, “Uhhh…doo-doo with that?”
That reminds me: Vivian and William used to call a playground a “Dee-Ya-Ya”, mostly because that was the sound they made going down the slide. It’s part of our family vernacular…though it’s usage is slipping into archaic.
It can’t possibly slip into archaic unless you let it. You must bring it back, Leanne. Hold onto the ‘Dee-Ya-Ya,’ you know? At least until you’ve done the speech at their weddings…at that point maybe you can stop. Unless you want to tell their children. OK…then you can stop after that. Oh heck, why stop, really…? It’s so handy to not have to be Englishly Intelligable all the time (less pressure too). Something to think about next time you’re on a talk show, anyway 🙂
That happens to me when I’m especially tired – so pretty much all the time. My mind can see the thing I mean, but I have no words. And I’m really terrible at names; I lose those as soon as I’m told.
I’m great with names when I’m intentional about it. If I’m not, I am the worst.
I can’t think of specific times, but I know I do this. After you have kids, there’s only so much brain capacity left. I’m off to go pull my dinner out of the cooking box.
We are sisters from another mister.
Hi! I’m new here, but I can relate to this post.
I’m always getting words mixed up, and my daughter is always correcting me. (I guess it’s karma for when I used to correct my own mother.)
She’ll get hers someday!
Indeed she will! Thanks for taking the time to comment, Kylie.
As long as you remember your kids’ names, you’re golden.
There’s a chapter in my book where I forgot my son’s name.
I forget all kind of words. Usually it happens with verbs and…. and… here we go. Mostly verbs. I confuse them, like saying connected instead of convicted, realizing that’s not what I meant to say.
Italian can be tricky.
I’m amazed at people who have multiple languages running through their head.
A colleague of mine can switch from italian to finnish plus english, french and german quite easily. And her children speak italian with her and finnish with their grandparents. That does not compute, in my head. O_O
Hmmmm……Colin Firth.
(He makes me forget words too.)
Don’t encourage her!
He does get 5 mentions in my book…
You are always good for a laugh. I hope the kids Viv is feeling better
She’s back to school today, finally. Thanks for inquiring, Ray.
I forget a lot of things, right now I thought I had an aneurysm as I watched a white dot trickle its way to the edge of my screen, before realizing you had “snow” flakes swirling around the page. Most of the time, I’m trying to forget one of my 6 year old twins at the grocery store unfortunately the boy twin never lets me leave his sister behind. One doddles, one listens. 🙂 Merry Christmas Leanne! I love hearing you on the radio, thanks for keeping me from buying all those dud toys for my twins. The crayon melting one was looking great until….
When I forget names of people or objects, I tell my students that if I didn’t have my name sewn into my clothes that I’d forget that, too. Sad to say, some believe me. 🙂
Thanks for the chuckle, Leanne.