The Dangers of Vocabulary

As I mentioned on Monday, several months back I took the boys down to the Animal Kingdom for a Saturday of fun.

If you’ve never been to Disney, you need to know that they name their parking sections. At the Magic Kingdom, they’re named after Disney Characters. At the Animal Kingdom, they’re named after animals.

Since J wasn’t with us, I was a little bit nervous about forgetting where we parked. So I told the boys we were in the Dinosaur section. And then, to try to reinforce it, I explained that we were riding on the Dinosaur train.

C didn’t like this idea: "No, not the dinosaur train. The monster train!"

I’ve no idea how he went from "dinosaur" to "monster", but I figured that would be enough of a reminder to me, so we stuck with it. Ever since then, that has become a part of his vocabulary. All parking lot trams are now called "monster trains".

Flash forward to this past weekend, when were we were down at the parks again. As we were watching the tram pull up, C shouted "Hooray! Monster Train!" When we got on it, C looked to me and said "we’re riding on a Monster Train!"

"Yep," I said.

Remember how I asked who cared what a toddler called a tram? The answer is another toddler.

As soon I said "yep", a determined little boy’s voice behind us shouted "No! This isn’t a monster. It’s not!" His daddy immediately reassured him.

C shouted back "it’s a monster train!"

Wanting to back C up, but also avoid scaring the other child, I said "No, it’s not a monster, it’s a monster train."

That seemed to mollify the boy. He gave one last rebellious "it’s not a train!". C & I ignored him.

But N didn’t. He shouted "Train! Train! Train!"

Fortunately, this caused the other parents to laugh, and the whole situation passed.

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