AIN'T AIN'T A WORD

I'm not quite sure how it started, but my daughter has been singing silly songs all week, most of them with the refrain above! I think they must have read it in a book recently, but I have always found the word interesting when adults use it in normal language.

Today I heard a cook talking about her pumpkin cake, and she pronounced it "pun-kin". I love the total lack of self-awareness it takes not to hear it wrong. My daughter is almost finished "correcting" those endearing mistakes, but she still has a few. They are more sophisticated words now: specific comes out "pacific". She sometimes still insists something is "lit-er-al-ly" something, because it sounds like a great emphasizing word, but she applies it indiscriminately to objective and subjective ideas. A precursor to this was "actually". A little trying on vocabulary that will make her a better conversationalist, but adorable while it is a little off the mark.

When she was little, she called the cat litter "glitter", or, my favourite, "glitter box". She's totally corrected that error, and now I miss it.  My life is the poorer for it, but in another sense, it was a phase bound to end.

It reminds me of a Harvard graduation speech I heard by Natalie Portman. I guess that was her alma mater after she was famous for Star Wars. She talks about finding her "meaning in the experience" instead of worry about trophies/prizes, which freed her to chose jobs she was passionate about, and pursue" meaningful experiences". But the most interesting idea was her impression from ballet. Once your technique is perfected, "your quirks or even flaws" are what set you apart. "You can never be the best, technically".  That's not achievable. But she "encourages" us "to develop our own self", because that's what people will remember. Another idea she mentions dovetailed into my ongoing embrace of risk taking, mistakes and potential failure. She says,  she was "so oblivious of her own limits that she did things she was woefully unprepared to do." Her "complete ignorance to" her "own limitations looked like confidence". She goes on to say, " Fear protects us in many ways". What has served her "is diving into my own obliviousness... Your inexperience is an asset, and will allow you to think in original and unconventional way(s). Accept your lack of knowledge and use it as your asset."

So while I used to think my high school beau should know what he is talking about when he tried to apply big words without the proper meaning or pronunciation, now I find the grace to see that he was, like a child, just brave enough to keep learning.