Thursday 2 April 2009 - Tantalizements
Fuzz is my budding Word Nerd and Lover of Dictionaries and Thesauruses. (Thesauri?) She loves looking up synonyms to use in her writing assignments and she loves finding out the meanings of words she comes across in her reading and during conversations. This has seemed to increase since she was given a huge tub of Nancy Drew books a month or so ago; apparently books written in the 1950's contain a veritable storehouse of fascinatingly unfamiliar words for an inquisitive ten-year-old. She is constantly either asking what words mean or looking them up herself. I think this word-fascination of hers is great fun.
Today she asked me what "tantalize" meant. Before I had a chance to answer, she was already looking it up in the green paperback student dictionary which she'd stolen from her brother's desk because "he never uses it anyway". (This is true.) She discovered that to tantalize means "to make miserable by showing something desirable but keeping it out of reach."
Fast-forward to this evening. Hubz & the youngers are in bed and I am on the computer. I hear little footsteps come up the stairs and realize that Fuzz has been in bed for over half an hour and I have again forgotten to go down and tuck her in. She's still a Mama's girl and my going down to her room to tuck her in bed a few minutes after she goes downstairs is still an integral part of our routine.
Except when I forget, as I have been doing lately.
"Oh," I say, sincerely apologetic . "Did I forget to tuck you in again?" Getting up hastily from the couch, I head toward the stairs with her. As I follow her back down, she sighs and laments, quite clearly:
"Three nights in a row of tantalizement..."
In other words, I suppose, I am making her miserable by keeping the much-adored tucking-in ritual just out of her reach. I tantalize her with promises of comings down and tuckings in and then fail to deliver. Or something like that.
Okay, so maybe she gets only 4 out of 10 for usage. But give her a 9 for effort and 9.5 for vocabulary. And the cuteness factor is definitely off the charts.
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Posted by Anonymous
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I love that in that one brief moment (and verbalizing) that she forgave you and moved on. I love it.