The Spelling Communique

Remember that speaking technique that your parents used before you knew how to spell? They would say something like, “Kids your mother and I are going Home Depot to stare at lumber.” And then your dad would turn to your mom and whisper, “We are really going for P-E-D-I-C-U-R-E-S”. 

So I was helping out at church by watching the Relief Society sister’s children while they took a “Nature Walk” around our neighborhood. That’s right a Nature Walk, which must be code for “let’s drop off our kids to those suckers at the church and get P-E-D-I-C-U-R-E-S at the Wal-Mart Nail Center”.  And let’s be honest sisters, we live in “big town suburbia” and there isn’t any nature within walking distance, so come on, let’s get real.

So I’m sitting there with Play-doh in my hair, while 10 children are climbing all over me, when one of the brothers came in with an excited look on his face and says, “Rob, I don’t want the kids to know yet, but we have I-C-E  C-R-E-A-M if the kids are really good.”

Here’s me, “OK. I-C…UM…OK, one more time. What do we have for the kids?”

He said it slower this time, “We have I-C-E  C-R-E-A-M.”

I just smiled and acted like I knew what he had spelled even though I really could had no idea what he was talking about.

Let me pause her to say that I am not stupid. But for whatever reason I just wasn’t getting this form of communication. Perhaps it’s because I don’t have kids and don’t use this method of communication as often as I should. I was just out of practice that’s all. Right?

So this good brother realized I still wasn’t getting what he was spelling because I wasn’t as excited as he was. So he picked up a piece of chalk and then wrote I-C-E  C-R-E-A-M on the chalk board.

And then I blurted out like the people on the “$10,000 Pyriamid, “Oh Ice Cream”

Where upon all the children starting jumping up and down, trampling all of the adult baby sitters in a mad rush for the kitchen to get their ice cream.

Everyone else looked at me like I was a retard, because I released the “top secret ice cream information”. OOOHHHH. Come on guys don’t be so D-U-m…um…Don’t be so S-T-U-P…Ohh brother.