Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Vernacular

I spend a bit of time hanging out at the local skate park, chaperoning the ten-year-old through an emaciated and oily forest of "youth". (I actually don't mind doing this. It gives me a chance to observe. Today's active child is tomorrow's "youth", after all, and it allows me to do some research unobserved: unobserved because I am of such an advanced age that I do not actually appear to them in visible form.) Language is an issue here, and the ten-year-old understands that just because the bigger guys use it doesn't mean that he can, so don't even think about it. He's cool with that (for now). But sometimes a gem slips out that demands to be catalogued.

One such: "Hey, don't do that. I almost shat out my own heart."