Me Knows Better Than to Say This… but I will. The word touché is a difficult word to master when growing up. Countless times my thirteen year old daughter has attempted to use the word and has never really gotten it right any of those times. Unfortunately I have found the word and its use difficult to explain in a fashion that she would understand. However, life presented Jimmy with the perfect teaching moment.
My teenager started teasing me that I wasn’t the brightest individual that ever walked the earth and she decided to toss out the word touché incorrectly once again as a means to punctuate her argument… However, as a typical teenager might do, she got overly excited about some perceived mistake by a parent and in doing so, she managed to get the facts wrong. I reminded her not to jump to conclusions and I recited the unknown details behind the story as proof of her incorrect assumption and mentioned to her that it might be better to be a bit more humble in the future rather than blindly think she was correct on everything. Then I tried to explain the appropriate use of the word touché for that last particular instance as it didn’t fit the intended purpose at all.
After some more back and forth banter on the subject, I returned the tease as she wasn’t getting any of my explanations, “Honey… you know the problem with ignorance?”
In a typical teenager rant she replied, “No… what dad?”
“The problem with ignorance is not knowing when you have it.”
Without thinking, my daughter quickly added, “Oh… I have it!” and she nodded her head vigorously to affirm her point.
I chuckled for a moment before responding, “Yes you do and after I tell you what ignorance means… that might be a really good time for you to say… ‘Touché Dad’… as then you would be using it correctly.”
No comments:
Post a Comment