Friday, February 27, 2015

"Lady Killer" or "Killer Girl" ?




AJ had been with us a year or so. He was around 9 years old. We were still speaking Spanish, but were transitioning to using mostly English. He was amazingly orally proficient for being in the country such a short period of time. He had huge holes in his basic vocabulary, but was also a complex thinker using 11th grade words; "speedometer" was one of the first words out of his mouth when we first adopted him.


One day we stopped at the alterations shop so I could drop off some pants for hemming. The owner looked at AJ-the-Latino-Charmer (quite handsome with his award-winning smile, if I do say so myself) and said, "My, AJ, you're going to be a lady killer some day!" On the way out of the shop, AJ looked at me and asked, "Mom, what's a killer girl?I must have explained it in terms he understood, because, after mulling it over awhile, he exclaimed, "I’ve got it, I know what a "killer girl" is! It's when a girl likes me, sticks to me like gum, and I say 'No, no, no!"  His exact words! At that time he told me that he understood this well because he was having "dates" with  a 3rd grade girl who had been relentlessly vying for his attention -- those "dates" consisting of "staring" at one another  across the playground at recess. LOL

3 comments:

  1. How about "Are you feeling blue today?" or Your idea or comment came "out of the blue".

    When the high school student was asked "Are you feeling a little blue today?", his response was, " I am not blue person."

    A middle school young man was told by his teacher that his comment about the Holocaust came "out of the blue" because he did not understand that, "out of the blue" was an idiomatic expression meaning unrelated to a topic.

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  2. Hi, Mary,

    More "blue" idioms I think of: "You're talking a blue streak!" or "Your true blue." And then there's, "You're blue-blooded." There are so many idioms for so many hues! Makes English quite a "colorful" language, no? :)

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  3. great. looking forward to more. Thanks

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