Preseason: Me 1, K.L. 0
Since K.L. and I started hanging out on a regular basis, we’ve had a sort of war of words going on. She pronounces a number of words in a manner I find peculiar and, apparently, I pronounce some works “wrong” as far as she’s concerned. Tonight, we had dinner at Duke’s Chowder House with her parents (which seemed to go well, by the way) both Seattle Brother and her dad got some kind of gnocchi dish. Her brother botched the word to start saying noa-chie and then K.L. corrected him, pronouncing the word as noa-kie. I interjected that it wasn’t pronounced that way either and pronounced it properly with nyah-kie. As always this turned into some kind of ridiculous debate that was to be settled later. Upon returning back to the place we’re staying, I headed over to the handy dandy Merriam-Webster dictionary which has an audio sample of the proper pronunciation.
Once we’d discovered that I was right—as usual—I noted that I’d been winning a lot on this trip. K.L. asked when I had won before and I realized that it wasn’t this trip, but recently. She pressed for when and I couldn’t and still can’t remember. But it was some time recently. I then asked her if she wanted to start keeping score. She agreed, but said scoring starts tomorrow so I don’t get to start on a win. You should see me zoom ahead now that her revisionist (and biased version) of history can’t stand up to a scoreboard.
In response to the idea of me writing about our scoreboard K.L. said, “You know, you’re going to make both of us sound really pedantic and competitive.” So I said, “We are competitive.” She responded, “No we’re not, because you always lose, so there’s no competition.” So yeah, I guess we’re not competitive.
Oh, and let me add this: my mom drove both of us to the airport yesterday and on the drive I was trying to make the point that K.L. is weird. I figured my own mom would side with me if I told her a story. So I did. The story goes that the other night K.L. was in my room, wrapped up in my brown blanket. As she tends to, she made a ridiculous—she would say “imaginative”—statement, “I feel like a sausage.” Okay, so that’s not that bad. However, she followed it up, in her tone that she has and says, “I’d rather be a sausage patty.” This is the part where my mother should have said, “Yeah, you’re weird. No one really considers what kind of sausage they’d prefer to be.” Unfortunately, this is not what happened.
I say, “See, she’s weird,” and I thought my mom agreed. I even misheard something she had said and began a premature celebration. My mom, however, corrected me and noted, “No, that’s not what I said. It makes perfect sense. If you’re going to be a sausage you should know what kind. I’d be a chicken apple sausage.” My celebration was cancelled. There was no victory—only defeat. K.L. noted later that my face looked “pathetic.”
My own mother sold me out. Heart-breaking really.
Incidentally, ventriloquize is a real word. It’s what ventriloquists do. (For the curious among you, this came up because K.L. constantly blames me for any odd bodily sounds that are made. Even if she makes them, she merely insists that I was ventriloquizing.)
Finally, Michigan lost its season opener to Utah today. I’m happy because I inherited my father’s hatred of the Big 10 and cheer for the Mountain West in most cases. Also, it’s Tacita’s alma mater. Go Utah!