Hereditary pedantry?

 First posted February 2008

The other evening I went into our office where No2 son was on the internet (it’s actually the little box-room over the stairs).

“Shall I close the curtains, or leave them as they are?” I asked.

He looked at me solemnly and with not a little distain before stating “There’s only one curtain in this room.”

I left wordlessly.

At Tyne Bridge practice that night I recalled this story to Mrs Drummerman.  She is a health-visitor and has always taken an active and helpful interest in my boys.

 “Ah” she said sagely “that’s what it’s like with autistic children.”

But I’m not so sure.

When I got home that night BBC News 24 was reporting on the stricken cargo-ferry Riverdance.  According to the newsreader she was “in trouble eight miles west of the Lancashire coast”. 

On hearing that I heard myself muttering “Well she’d be in a damn sight more trouble if she were eight miles east of the Lancashire coast.”

His auntie, my teacher-sister, used to use the Anadin conundrum to ascertain academic development.  When her primary pupils could understand that it was better to take nothing for a headache than Anadin because, according to the advert, “nothing works faster than Anadin” she knew her work was done.

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard my father say “Why do they say such-and-such a thing is good for a cold?  I want something that will be bad for the cold and get rid of it.  The last thing I want is something that’s good for it and keep it going.”

Then of course there’s the boys’ father Fester.

Whenever I ask him a question like “Are you not going to shut that door – it’s bleeping freezing in here?” he invariably replies “Yes, I am not going to shut the door.”

Logically and pedantically correct – but wrong in so many other ways.

As my mother used to say “It runs in the family like a wooden leg.”