the ark of mark

Daddy’s little girl turns eight this weekend.  She has a vocabulary years beyond eight.  She recently used this vocabulary to ruin yet another word for me.

(Years ago I mentioned how the word “meteorologist” had forever been ruined for me when I realized it sounded like “meaty urologist” and how almost all TV weather casts now result in me thinking about a portly physician).

These are the perils of having a precocious child who reads a lot.  And when I say she reads a lot, you should know that more than once I have found an abandoned book she had propped up behind the bathroom faucet so that she could read while brushing her teeth.  Some people channel-surf.  Shelby book-surfs.  Books are all over our house and half of them are ones she wrote herself.

She ruined the word while our family was seated around the dinner table.  Jacob asked Laura a question about something I don’t even remember.  And then he asked another.  And another.  He was having fun and maybe just trying to tweak her a little.  Finally she laughingly suggested that he stop asking so many questions and try and “be a little more intuitive” about the situation.

Shelby piped up in mock disbelief, “You want him to be more like an Eskimo?”

Silence fell.  Blank faces were shared while Shelby sat there with a mischievous grin.  She knew she had us and relished the moment while she was the only one in on the joke.  Did you get it?  I’ll let you off the hook.

Inuit.  That was her wordplay.  One of the two main indigenous people groups that comprise Eskimos are the Inuit.  She had probably just finished reading some book about a plucky Inuit girl who saved a wolf or something.

And henceforth when I hear the word “intuitive” my brain is going to see that little devilish grin at my dinner table and translate it into “Inuitive” and wonder what Eskimos could possibly have to do with the situation.

Happy birthday, sweet girl.