The unexpected dangers of the Amazon Kindle. I almost crashed my car.
No, I wasn’t reading and driving. Worse.
My eleven year old daughter got a kindle for Christmas and she could not have been more excited. She is an avid reader and had wanted one for a long time.
So after we opened presents, we registered her kindle and had to decide on her first book. I recommended Ann of Green Gables.
After Christmas Mass, we are all headed over to my Mom’s house and she is reading in the back of the van.
“Dad?”
“Yes, sweetie?”
“What does ejaculation mean?”
Screeching of tires and….
Well, not really. But I look over at my wife and she is staring at me wide-eyed.
Blink. Blink…………Blink.
“It means an abrupt exclamation honey. An outburst.”
“Oh, thanks Daddy.”
See, if we just stuck with Latin, we wouldn’t have these kinds of problems. Dead languages have their advantages.
Man, I hope she doesn’t use her new vocabulary word in school.
December 26, 2011 at 4:55 pm
Plus of course there is a Catholic prayer connection where the word is used.
An ejaculation, sometimes called an aspiration, is a short prayer meant to be memorized and repeated throughout the day. In this way, we can heed Saint Paul's injunction to "Pray without ceasing" and continually turn our thoughts toward God
December 26, 2011 at 6:04 pm
Ha!
This was actually the first blog post I read on my new Kindle – I would take it as a warning but I have no kids to corrupt though with enhanced vocabulary.
December 26, 2011 at 8:00 pm
It's AnnE of Green Gables, not Ann of Green Gables. Anne Shirley would be horrified to have her name misspelled without the "e". 😉
December 26, 2011 at 8:22 pm
I got a Kindle for Christmas, too!
December 27, 2011 at 12:04 am
I left off the "E" for ejaculation.
December 27, 2011 at 4:03 am
That reminds me of a story a priest friend of mine told me years ago. He had a quite old bishop when he was a seminarian back in the 70s who didn't know that the meaning of the word had changed, and one day in meeting with all the seminarians the bishop said "Go to Mass every day, read the Bible, and I expect 100 ejaculations a day from each of you." I think my priest friend said he was able to keep a straight face…
December 27, 2011 at 11:30 pm
In the spirit of kids and car crashes, for years my son bugged me about what the "F" word was that got Ralphie in so much trouble in a Christmas Story. I was very inventive with my answers, but he always sensed that I was prevaricating. Then, when he was 9 or 10, I was on an access road off I-35, and traffic was terrible because of an accident on the interstate. I duly put on my signal to change lanes when an SUV leapt out of nowhere and nearly smashed my car. I evaded by driving over a curb and onto a grassy median. I sorted things out with the other, profusely apologetic driver (who was an instructor for the Dept. of Public Safety: o irony) and returned to my car shaking, asking the kids if they were OK. There was a certain stillness, then my son said, in a soft voice laced with quiet triumph, "Now we know what the "F" word is."