Faux Pas Friday

Welcome to the first installment of Faux Pas Friday. Here are this week's unfortunate misunderstandings of the English language, as heard or read by Mrs. Hillbilly Mom, Wordsmith Extraordinaire.

Let's begin with Mrs. HM's own spawn, a 10-year-old tyke with a slight hearing problem. He hopped off the bus amid the day-long downpour, and entered HM's classroom full of science fair displays after school. "Wow! Look at all of them!" the boy declared, running with arm-breaking fervor to the far wall to inspect them further. Mrs. HM announced, about the "Which Fruit Contains The Most Seeds?" project, which had dropped a peach pit enclosed in a baggie since being set up that morning, "One of them has lost a seed."

The young lad parroted, "It's lost at sea? I get it--because of all the rain."

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Next up, we have a simple misunderstanding from Mrs. Not A Cook down the hall from Mrs. HM's classroom. On the half-day before Easter vacation, her class was playing a mathematical card game of some sort. Mrs. HM's self-declared favorite student wanted Mrs. Not A Cook to get on with the game. "Deal those!" he urged, with the accent of a 15-year-old hick Missouri town redneck. Which entered Mrs. Not A Cook's ears as "Dill does," which sounded like a certain fake body part used for sexual gratification, causing Mrs. Not A Cook to shout accusingly, "WHAT did you say?" which in turn caused her students to imply that she had a dirty mind.

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From these simple misunderstandings, we return to Mrs. HM's classroom, to the high school senior who told his buddies that on a certain day in question, he was not inappropriately attired for a situation, but was wearing a normal outfit for the place and time, with the shirt being a 'white-beater'. Even the boy the group regarded as the most ignorant and socially inept had the nerve to call him on it.

"Uh, that's a WIFE-beater, stupid. Not a WHITE-beater! Because trailer-trash guys wear them to beat their WIVES, idiot, not WHITES!" The outrage in the room was nearly palpable.

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And now, to the political arena, where people who leave comments on newspaper articles should really check their grammar or their usage or their spelling or just plain have a 12th-grader wearing a wife-beater read over their comments before submitting.

Exhibit A: "President Clinton hinted it, rather, tried to use it to the advantage of his wife’s champagne, but it worked against her."

Let's hope they didn't celebrate with a glass of campaign.



Exhibit B: "They need to realize that they are not going to be allowed to ride rough shot over Obama."

Well, now. I suppose any type of being ridden over would be equally uncomfortable, whether it be rough shot or roughshod.

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And there you have it. Our maiden voyage of the HM's Faux Pas Friday.
I do loves me some fancy words, by cracky!