Spoken out-of-turn

Daelyn has developed a sometimes annoying habit of picking up catch phrases from movies we watch as a family and then using them indiscriminately for the next several weeks.

It wasn't too bad when the phrase was from the family classic, "Seven Alone".

"I know there's good in you, boy, I just hope I live to see it."

Now, however, he's moved on to lines from SpiderMan which, in context, sound completely innocuous but, repeated by themselves, take on a whole different meaning.

I guess I shouldn't complain. My nephew grew up watching reruns of "The Andy Griffith Show" and can probably still recite entire episodes from memory. We got awful tired of his Barney imitations and, never, with any preamble or explanation. He'd just launch into a squeeky, slightly nasal tone and recite some goofy line.

Barney: "Nip it in the bud, I always say. Nip it, nip it, nip it."

Andy: "Barn...?"

Barney: "Nip it, Anj. Just nip it in the bud."

We always worried a little about him when he started quoting Otis, the town drunk.

My favorite episode is the one where Andy is asked, once again, to head up the fund drive for homeless boys. He finds out from Opie's teacher, whom he dates, that Opie gave the next to the smallest donation in the class. The only person who gave less than him was a homeless boy. He confronts Opie who explains that he's saving his money to buy a present for a little girl in the class that he likes, and Andy begins his lecture.

Andy: "Do you know that for every 10 boys in our county, there are 2 1/2 homeless boys?"

Opie: "Gee, Pa, I'd sure like to see that."

Andy: "See what?"

Opie: "A half a boy."

Andy: "It's not really a half a boy, son. It's a ratio."

Opie: "Horatio who?"

In the end, after disciplining Opie for hoarding his money for his little girlfriend, Andy is humiliated to find out that Opie is saving to buy this little girl a winter coat because she doesn't have one. Apparently, Opie understands the concepts Andy's trying to teach him much better than Andy.

Classics like that are hard to beat. And Daelyn never seems to memorize lines from Veggie Tales videos. Only the lines spoken by the boys from "across the tracks" in "Where the Red Fern Grows" and the lines spoken by the villain in SpiderMan.

I'm just hoping, over the next 16 days, he doesn't pick up on the Passion-phrase coined by Turino for the Winter Olympics. That one, spoken out of turn, might REALLY get us into trouble.