Blurting
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| Word master. |
I know you’ve done it.
I know I have.
Blurted out something that sounded a whole lot different in your head.
It’s true.
Your brain coughs up a thought.
And hits ‘send’.
Then, somehow, during transition, it gets . . . mixed up.
Maybe exposure to the air changes it.
And it ends up sounding like . . . nothing you intended.
My mom was a master at this.
Example one:
Picture Christmas Eve.
Every available surface in the kitchen groaning beneath seven layers of freshly-baked Christmas delicious-ness.
No supper in sight.
A starving son-in-law, passing the piles of goodies.
Hunger overcomes discretion.
He pops a butter tart into his mouth.
Mom, emerging from the point of action in front of the oven, red-faced and carrying yet another pan of treats, “Don’t eat that! It’s for Christmas!”
Example two:
Mom brings home the good peanut butter.
Not the cheap un-homogenized stuff which allows all of the oil to rise to the top so that the upper layers are too creamy and the bottom layers need to be chiseled out with a hammer then passed through the meat grinder to make them of a consistency to spread.
Which tin, I should mention, is still on the shelf 3/4 full and gathering dust.
Sooo . . . the good peanut butter.
Which is immediately set upon by the ‘finickily-starved’ (I just made that up) peanut butter fiends that inhabit the house.
“I’m going to stop buying that peanut butter. You kids just eat it!”
Mom taught her daughters well.
I, too have had my share of ‘things-said-that-didn’t-come-out-just-right’.
We were discussing a young man of our acquaintance who had been born with weak joints in his hips.
My mother-in-law was cautioning my kids not to jump off the retaining wall in her back garden, citing this young man as an example of ‘damage that could follow’.
I knew that his condition was genetic.
Or congenital.
Which mean the same thing.
What came out was, “Oh, but I thought his condition was genital!”
Wait. Everybody un-hear that!
Just let me suck those words back into my mouth!
Admit it.
It’s happened to you . . .
Reminds me of something a friend's young son blurted out during church one time. No, I'm not repeating it....
ReplyDeleteHahahaha! Why do they always choose that moment when all around them are totally silent? ;)
DeleteMore and more I stay silent. I have had my bloopers, but most often I stay quiet, like yesterday when my sister-in-law goes on and on about the guy her one daughter married who has all this money. Who cares. Let's here about your studious and hard-working OWN children.
ReplyDeleteI hear you. Sometimes foot in mouth isn't enough for me and I shove my whole leg inside.
ReplyDeleteLaughing. So glad I'm not the only one!
ReplyDeleteHeeheehee! Sometimes the words do get twisted on the way out.
ReplyDeleteEnjoyed reading this! My grand-uncle's wife was known in the family for blurting. On their Golden Wedding Anniversary, my uncle told us that the family owed him for the entertainment he had provided us for 50 years via his wife!
ReplyDelete