Is That a Word?

We have this neat little family card game that we got for the boys for Christmas.  It's called Quiddler and it doesn't take long to play and it's fun for killing time in the hour between dinner and "Jack-related gunplay" (AKA 24) when we have a chance to sit down together as a family and safely embrace the not-always-apparent upsides of torturing people.  (Heck, there's a moral lesson in there for the kids.  The ticking time bomb theory of moral ethics dictates that if you've got to do it, you've got to do it. Besides, anybody can see it PAINS Jack to have to torture somebody (everybody) to get information. He rarely enjoys it.)

Quiddler involves making words out of letter cards.  Some letters are worth more than others (like Q and X and J).  You add up the points after somebody spells a word, and you keep escalating the word lengths until you reach 8 letters.  Then game over.  Simple and fun.

But we didn't recognize how potentially sensitive and pornographic it could get until one of our boys, while examing his four cards, asked:

"Is CLIT a word?"

Stunned silence for three seconds before Rebecca and I said in unison: "NO!"

After a few more seconds, and unable to hold my smile back, I said to my boy: "Hold on.  Spell it for me."

"C-L-I-T."

I fake pondered for a moment, and then said, "Nope.  Not a word. Is it honey?"

Rebecca replied, without looking up from her cards: "Definitely not."

Another few moments go by and I'm flashing forward to the future when my boy hears the word and recalls that years before he asked if that word was actually a word and his trustworthy parents insisted that it wasn't a word, and the whole house of cards would come tumbling down.  "They LIED to me?"  I couldn't hold back any longer and burst out laughing.  Rebecca did, too, which is one of my most treasured sights to behold.

"Yes!  Yes!  My God, yes. It is a word. Clit IS a word. In the top five dirtiest words in the entire language.  And you've spelled it!"

The boys remarked that they never saw me laugh so hard in their lives.

Sadly, that's it for Quiddler.  We can't have our boys spelling other wanton words like:  C*** or W**** or M**.  (Though of course they are eager to play it again and stumble upon other illicit combinations of letters.) We're going to have to do something else between dinner and family-hour Jack-related gunplay from now on.

Maybe I'll read Henry Miller books aloud to them.

Comments

[Bob]

So what does it mean? As my wife can attest, I've certainly never heard of such a thing.

You could always tell them that it stands for Comparative Literature, as it does in the PSU course catalogue. I took CLit 101 back in 1984.

[yellojkt]

My mind is not nearly dirty enough because I can't figure out W**** or M**

[yellojkt]

In Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back Jay is the commander of the Coalition Liberation of Itneninant Tree Dwellers.

[Cathy]

The five-year-old daughter of a friend of mine announced to my friend's at-the-time new boyfriend (now husband), "I have a BAGINA!" (as only a five-year-old can pronounce).

[sirjorge wwe]

wow, i wouldn't know how to respond to such a question from my kids.