Tag: parenting

Lost in Translation

genuis bar, as seen at the Apple store

Joined the 21st century this past December when I signed up for Facebook (FB). Already the lingo is giving me fits.

I get LOL. I like it. I use it. It’s clever.

But then came BTW, BFF, LMK, ROTF, TTYL, etcetera ad nauseum.

Nearly blew a gasket trying to figure out LMAO.

An acquaintance kept using it in her FB posts. LMAO this, LMAO that. What on earth was she talking about?

I conjectured a translation. Love My Agitated Orange? Lately Missing An Olive? My friends ROTFLOL before clueing me in.

Two friends, the would-be stand up comedian and the soon-to-be company president, have taken to making up their own acronyms. PIMP is their favorite. A relative of LMAO, PIMP stands for Peed In My Pants.

There’s FAIL and WIN, though I think those are still actual words not abbreviations.

There’s HTC, HMU, FML, among a dozen others my friend’s teenage daughter wields like secret code.

There are emoticons. Nice, but I can only stand so many smileys a day. Now if they were gold stars, that would be another story.

I see hash marks popping up everywhere the way Haley Joel Osment saw dead people in The Sixth Sense. There are asterisks and @ symbols behind every tree.

These glyphs gone wild seem to involve Twitter. I’ve asked for translation, though my requests go unanswered. The Twitterati are a sophisticated bunch. They hang with Ashton Kutcher, you know.

Greek to me

Confusion multiplies when acronyms from other parts of language wander haphazardly onto FB like cows wander onto train tracks.

Old school ASAP and RE appear without much fuss. But when I used GSO on FB to describe where I was, a friend promptly messaged, “What does GSO mean?”

Well in real life it’s an airport code for Greensboro. In FB world, I’m not sure what I said.

Another friend posted an ellipsis in response to a lively conversation we were publicly engaged in via FB. I had no idea what the ellipsis meant. Neither did Google. Had he just cursed at me? Called me an idiot?

After stewing a bit, I messaged him. What did this lone punctuation mark mean?

He explained he wasn’t upset. He simply had nothing to say to my last comment. So he chose an ellipsis, the language of superheros. Like what Batman would say to Wonder Woman in a comic book when he’s at a loss for words.

I had fretted over a fictional character’s made-up thought cloud. Go figure.

In her book “A Nation of Wimps: The High Cost of Invasive Parenting,” author Hara Estroff Marano asserts we adults are digital immigrants while technology is the native tongue of our children (2008, pp. 220-221). The key to survival is adapting well in this brave new world.

Can you teach an old dog new tricks? IDK, but I’m game to find out. RU?

Wise men and women are always learning, always listening for fresh insights. Proverbs 18:15 The Message

still means and?

A Tip from Batman

Got a pocket full of kryptonite? Does your kid want to wear a cape or shoot lasers out of his eyes? Free Comic Book Day is May 7th. This year is the 10th anniversary of what has become an international event. Participants enjoy sketches, artist appearances, and of course free comic books. Check your local shop for details.

Special thanks to Sofia Coppola and her friends ScarJo and BillMu for Lost in Translation, the only movie to give me jet lag.

Posted on by Aimee 6

Bring It, Sweet Sephora

I'm on the list

Is it wrong to thank Jesus I have finally been added to the Sephora mailing list?

Sidebar: For those of you whose mailboxes were also graced with the spring catalog, does François Nars look a lot younger than you expected? In my head I pictured him more like designer Valentino. Imagine my shock to see he’s such a PYT (that’s Michael Jackson-ese for Pretty Young Thing).

Back to the question at hand. Is it wrong to give thanks for the catalog?

Or to thank God when I find a parking place at the mall close to the door?

Or when the snow melts quickly because I’m so sick of snow I could scream?

Or when I see a collection of robins hopping around my yard, so I know even if it doesn’t feel like it, spring is here or they wouldn’t be?

Well-meaning people may imply these are trivial, silly, selfish things. It is disrespectful to thank God for such drivel.

How dare I be so trite with the Holy Almighty God. He is God and I am not.

And for that matter, I should not pray with my eyes open or when driving or doing anything else, but only during a scheduled quiet time first thing in the morning. I should not wear shorts either.

Okay. I’m kidding about the shorts. No one has implied that to me. Yet.

God is God. He is Holy. Almighty. Perfect. I am not. Agreed.

But I am His child.

And if He sees me at all like I see my child, nothing is drivel really. What matters to my child matters to me. Big or small. Important or trivial. Serious or shallow.

The One who made all the stars and calls them each by name, who sees even the smallest sparrow fall, who knows the number of hairs on my head, He is my Father and He knows. He knows. He knows.

Be it day or dark of night, whenever I am blessed with the slightest tinge of joy or troubled by the most fleeting of worries, He says to me, “Bring it, child. Bring it.”

And when I do, it is well with my soul.

How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! 1 John 3:1 NIV

brave heart

To listen to Children of God by Third Day on their website, click here. Grab a box of tissues. They have quite a message to share.

Posted on by Aimee 2

Scrabbled: How to Beat the Queen

loser queen

This year, for the first time in 15 years of marriage, my husband beat me in Scrabble. Twice.

You must understand, I am the Scrabble Queen. Trained from childhood to vanquish challengers, I float like a butterfly and sting like a bee. A spelling bee.

Alas, I’ve been dethroned in my own castle by a mere mortal. A man who only learned to play Scrabble because it’s my favorite game.

How, you ask? How did this injustice happen?

My husband has discovered a secret weapon. An Achilles heel.

He invites our six-year-old son to play Scrabble with us.

“MYFILT,” says the child. “I have myfilt. M-Y-F-I-L-T.”

“Honey, that’s not a word,” I say. “You have to make a word.”

“FLIMTY,” he says. “How about flimty?”

“No, that’s not a word either.”

My husband remains silent, part of his diabolical strategy.

“Mom, how about MILE? That’s a word!” he says, “I can put down mile.”

He reaches across the board. Only it isn’t his turn. And there is no place to put mile.

tile pile

“Baby, it has to fit in with the other words on the board. Like a crossword puzzle. And you have to wait your turn,” I say. “It’s mommy’s turn now.”

I look at my slate. I look at the board. All I can see are tiny, no point words. AND, BUT, OR. It’s Conjunction Junction in my head.

“Can it go diagonal?” the child says. “I could put it right here diagonal.” Letters slide askew across the table.

“Let me help you put this back together,” I say. “And I’m sorry but you can’t put a word on the board diagonally.”

Not a peep from my husband. He is deep in stealth concentration, planning his next move.

“T-Y-L-I-F. TYLIF. Tylif, tylif, tylif!”

“Honey, let momma see what you have,” I say. “We’ll come up with something.”

At this point, I get up from my seat, leave my slate, go around to where my child is sitting, and analyze the letters on his slate. We form words. Wonderful words like tile, file, lime, time, elf, my…

Hey, wait a minute. It’s my turn.

An hour later, my husband breaks 200 points, my son breaks 100 and I’m stuck around 59. Stunned, I leave the table reeling with defeat. What happened?

the cub

My husband knows the one thing the queen cannot resist.

Want to distract her? Throw her off game? Beat her at Scrabble?

Bring in her cub. Works every time.

He tends His flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in His arms and carries them close to His heart; He gently leads those that have young. Isaiah 40:11 NIV

To see School House Rock’s Conjunction Junction on YouTube click here.

Posted on by Aimee 6

All I Really Need to Know About Terrorism I Learned in Kindergarten

Try explaining terrorism to a six-year-old.

swing high

The topic comes up occasionally with my son. He knows some bad men flew planes into buildings and the buildings fell down killings lots of people.

He asks me if the men who did this went to jail. No, I say. They died when they crashed the planes.

He wants to see the octagon in Washington, D.C. Likes to watch the news. Sees how the people in Cairo stood up to a dictator.

I tell him how blessed we are to live in America where we can think, speak and worship as we see fit. I tell him religious freedom is why the pilgrims came to America in the first place.

I tell him how in some countries people can be thrown in jail or even killed for disagreeing with their governments or believing in Christ. How the men who crashed the planes wanted to kill Americans.

People like them who try to scare and hurt us, they are the terrorists.

My kindergartner has some suggestions.

“Let’s put up signs everywhere that say ‘NO TERRORISTS ALLOWED,’ and tell the soldiers to shoot the terrorists if they see them.”

I like it. When can we get started?

He designs a crab pit to trap the terrorists. “They would be eaten by the crabs?”

“No,” he says. “The crabs would pinch them.”

I doubt pinching by crabs will withstand the Third and Fourth Geneva Convention rules against torture, but I’m not telling him that.

en garde, stranger

Then there are the war games. To a little boy, every stick is a weapon and every bad guy is a target.

He loves soldiers, tanks, fighter jets and aircraft carriers. He wants to be a warrior, a knight and a jedi. Wants to save the puppies, the kittens, the wild animals, the babies and the people.

That, my friends, is the American way.

Call it hawkish if you want. Call it naïve.

But there is nothing wrong with being the good guys.

Nothing wrong with standing for freedom and protecting the weak. Nothing wrong with knocking the daylights out of evil and terror.

In the words of former Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.), being lucky can’t be our national security strategy.

You who  love the LORD, hate evil! He protects the lives of His godly people and rescues them from the power of the wicked. Psalm 97:10 NLT

This post is dedicated to all those who work to protect our country.

Thanks to Robert Fulghum. His New York Times bestseller All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten gave me the idea for title.

Posted on by Aimee 12