My! What a big...

...vocabulary you have!

Since we first met in high school my husband has had issues with my vocabulary.

Like many kids who learn to read early and independently, I knew the meanings of lots of big words. But because I was only reading them in books, I never heard how they were pronounced. And like any good pseudo-intellectual, I never bothered to learn.

So I have this bad habit of using a "big" word, but repeating it twice and pronouncing it differently each time. Then there was that one fiasco in college with the word epitome (which I pronounced ep-i-tome). But through it all I realized something. I could use any word I wanted and pronounce it any way I wanted, and my husband would just assume I knew what I was talking about.

There are also those times that most married-with-kid couples will understand, when we want to talk, but we don't want the kids to know what we're talking about. We're way past the spelling phase in our family. (D-A-M-N, I miss the spelling.) So I use big words to disguise what I'm really saying.

Right before my husband left for training, we were all in the car. The kids were playing their one millionth game of Rock, Paper, Scissors and not paying much attention to us.

So I told my husband, "It just occurred to me this morning that eight months is a long time to go without. I hadn't even thought of it with everything else on my mind. I'm going to have to get some new accoutrements."

Now, I pronounced accoutrements right the first time. But then I repeated it with a French accent, just to amuse myself. Of course I'm the only one who found it amusing. But still, I thought it was better than spelling S-E-X T-O-Y-Ses.

I don't think my husband really said anything about my "big word" at the time. He may also have been shocked by the idea that we would really have to go eight months without sex. But apparently, it was in his mind for days after.

He texted me last night.

"Hi. How are things? I was thinking last night, what type of contrivance do you want?"

I responded with something about the hell of violin recitals and the chaos of a t-ball party, and then I said, "I have no idea what a contrivance is."

"You use big words with me. Maybe you need to look it up!"

When I didn't respond right away, he wrote, "Soooo, are you not in the mood to banter? Or are you looking up my new word."

Well, then I had to look it up. And it still made no sense to me. So I called him.

"Don't you remember our talk about toys? Come on! It took me three days to look up the word you used."

Now, at the time I had no memory of that conversation. So I asked him, "What word?"

"I don't remember now, it was something like incongruous."

Incongruous? What the hell was he talking about? Our conversation went back and forth on this topic for quite a while, with me using the dictionary to look up these words and give him official definitions. When I hung up the phone I still had no idea what he was talking about.

At 2 o'clock in the morning it hit me. Accoutrements! Accoutrements!

How the hell did he get incongruous out of accoutrements?

I love the way he thinks. It makes me so sodden.