Whad up y'all...welcome to the land of high achievers. The place where 6 year old children know things that you don't.

Every few days or so, Abby will come home from school with a book. She brings the book home so that she can read it to us, then takes it back the next day or so - and the cycle continues. We've enjoyed seeing her learn to read and watching the books get progressively more difficult. I knew there would come a day when I could no longer write secret notes to myself around the house or talk to Mike in letter-talk ("Hey Mike, go get some I-C-E-C-R-E-A-M for after Abby goes to S-L-E-E-P"). I need a new gig now. Perhaps I can take up short hand like my Mom did. Maybe I need to stop eating ice cream.

So Abby comes home today with a new book, "Amelia Bedelia". It's a fairly long book, so she reads some of it at school with her teacher. The teacher then leaves a little book mark with a note that says, "Read by Thursday" or something like that. Today, I opened the book to look at the bookmark note and it read, "Read by Thursday, find the idioms".

WHA?

Mike just happened to be standing next to me as I read the note aloud.

Listen people. I am not dumb. I took 15 years of community college, I know what I'm talking about. Mike is even smarter than me - he actually went to TWO state colleges (not to brag or anything...he hasn't quite put in the years I have) and even has a degree from one of them. We both be havin a fairly good command of the English language...gooder then most people. But we had NO FREAKING IDEA what an idiom was. I know what an idiot is...but I didn't think they were the same.

As we stood there frozen in retardation, in walks Abby. We both turn and look to her like she's E.F. Hutton...

"Abby....what's an idiom?"

She didn't miss a beat...she whipped off some explanation of what it was. Man, I wish I could tell you the answer she gave. It wasn't like a Webster's definition or anything. But she even followed it up with an example. "You know, like 'hit the road'".

Oh yeah...an IDIOM. Right, right.

I'm sure all of you knew what an idiom was...so good for you. But just in case, here's a definition from "The Idiom Connection" that helped us out:

An idiom is a combination of words that has a meaning that is different from the meanings of the individual words themselves. It can have a literal meaning in one situation and a different idiomatic meaning in another situation. It is a phrase which does not always follow the normal rules of meaning and grammar.
To sit on the fence can literally mean that one is sitting on a fence.
I sat on the fence and watched the game.
However, the idiomatic meaning of to sit on the fence is that one is not making a clear choice regarding some issue.
The politician sat on the fence and would not give his opinion about the tax issue.

As Gus Portokalos would say, "there you go"

Hittin' the road,
k