Lisa Snot

As kids, we learn language by listening.  We repeat what we hear - exactly as we hear it.  Trouble is, sometimes our brains will twist around what really goes in, to match what we have previously heard.  The results, I think, can be hilarious.

For example, when I was in second grade, we were asked to write about a person we would like to meet some day.  Any person in the world.  I chose José Canoosey.  You know, the guy at the beginning of the national anthem?  I wanted to find out why it mattered what he did in the morning, by the dawn's early light.

A friend of mine for years believed that things were "nuke-warm."  His logic?  When we nuke stuff, we don't always do it long enough so it comes out just kinda not warm and not cold.  We were in high school before I finally convinced him that most of the world referred to that state of being as LUKE warm.  Which made him ask, "Who's Luke?"  Good question, friend.  Good question.

Another friend recently shared that growing up in church, she found herself wondering every service who Lisa Snot was, and why Lisa Snot went into temptation. 

A child in my class has been memorizing definitions of the various forms he does.  One such definition refers back to the Silla Dynasty (Korea).  But in his head, he has always heard and therefore believed we were referring to the SillY Dynasty.  And he wanted to know who or what made that dynasty so silly, and why we were disrespectful of it by calling it that.

So.  Tell me about the things you or your friends or children you know have heard and said, only to later find out you were just a little off the mark.