My husband and I often spell words so that our small children won’t understand what we’re saying. I didn’t realize what a habit this had become until one day when my husband and I were in the grocery store at the soup aisle.
An aggressive young woman banged into our cart, then nudged me over, blocking my access to the soup. Annoyed, I looked at my husband and said, “Boy is she r-u-d-e!”
“Yeah,” he replied, “but I’ll bet she can s-p-e-l-l.”
As I drove into a parking lot, I noticed that a pickup truck with a dog sitting behind the wheel was rolling toward a female pedestrian.
She seemed oblivious, so I hit my horn to get her attention. She looked up just in time to jump out of the way of the truck’s path, and the vehicle bumped harmlessly into the curb and stopped.
I rushed to the woman’s side to see if she was all right.
“I’m fine,” she assured me, “but if that dog hadn’t honked…”
I was trying to decide what to do for a talent show I planned to enter.
Trusting my mother to help me out, I asked, “For the talent show, what do you think I should do, sing or put on a comedy act?”
Glancing up from her paper, she said dryly, “What’s the difference?”