Out of the mouths of babes comes… babyfood! But out of the mouths of young children come unintentionally hilarious expressions that convey messages brilliantly — what I have come to call ‘Words of Kidsdom’.
Young Trevor walked into the kitchen and told his mother that his balls hurt. A little flabbergasted, his mother said, “What did you say?” The boy replied: “My balls hurt.” and then he pointed to his eyes and said: “See! Right here is where they hurt!”
Coming home from a soccer game, a youngster told his parents about a friend who “…got hit hard by a soccer ball right in the groan area.”
I was with my wife and girls at the dinner table, when I asked our six-year-old how she enjoyed her day at school. Quite proudly, she proclaimed: “We’re learning about arithmetic and how to add numbers. Then our teacher’s going to show us how to distract.”
Said Sarah to her Grade One Teacher: “My daddy carries his work home in a griefcase.”
Kids can be so darn cute… without even trying! I walked into the kitchen to find my four-year-old daughter sweeping the floor with a broom three times her size. She looked up at me and said: “I’m brooming the floor.”
“If you go swimming in the ocean, you’ll get eaten by a sharp!”
Children are hardly ever aware when they have said anything uniquely special or particularly funny. Except when adults laugh at what they say, and then the youngster gets that “What are the big people laughing at?” look.
A Grade One class was on a trip to the local museum. They were looking at the World War II exhibit, and one of theboys asked, “Did we win World War Eleven?”
“My mom and dad say that we can’t go to visit Grandad in the hospital until he comes out of the expensive care unit.”
Well-meaning Tara complimented her mother, saying, “Mom? That perfume you’re wearing makes you smell so vagrant!”
Asked how tall he was, Adam proudly announced: “I’m almost three feet Fahrenheit!”
Here’s a few gems from Cody, the six year old son of a very close friend: He mangled the English language beautifully! He and I were looking at a book all about ocean wildlife. When it came to a chapter on whales, he looked at me and said: “Whales aren’t really fish, you know. They’re actually warm-blooded camels!”
“In cowboy days, if you killed someone or did something real bad, they’d hang you by putting a moose around your neck.”
I fondly remember the moment when Cody looked up from a book he was reading, and said: “Did you know that if you rub an old lamp, a genius will pop out?”
I was present the time he got a very close look at a Department Store Santa who had a real beard. After descending from St. Nick’s lap, he went to his mother and told her: “His beard was real all right! I could look up his nose and see his navel hairs!”
Words of Kidsdom is a collection of classic kid-bits that was close to twenty years in the making, all from the hearts and minds of children. It’s a very funny book, cleverly illustrated by Larry Miller, and has close to 1,000 original ‘oral oopsies’ like the ones you just read. Everyone enjoys them: parents, grandparents, teen-agers. Buy one for yourself, and a few others to give away as presents. You’ll be giving the gift of laughter!
