Does the Bumper Bonnet come in adult sizes?

At the playground this morning, Henry head-butted me, without warning or provocation, smack dab in the mouth. I was holding him (obviously; he’s not that tall yet) and chatting with an acquaintance, so when I first felt the impact I thought someone had playfully chucked a bowling ball at my teeth. Before I could have a second thought, tears began springing from my eyes; Henry was also bawling (why did her hard teeth hurt me like that?) and the acquaintance stared and asked, “Why is your face wet?” and I said, “Those are called tears,” and she said, “You hu-mans are so complicated,” and with that she glided away on her titanium casters and Henry and I sobbed all the way back to our apartment where we ate cream cheese and pumpkin spread on toast and felt a little better.

Now for some related trivia:

1. My acquaintance is not really a robot! She has feet, not casters.

2. I always want to write the past tense of “glide” as “glid.” Why isn’t that right? Has anyone looked into this?

3. Henry has hit me way harder than this before. His head-buttings have caused facial bruising and even a (slightly) bloody nose. Yet after those brutal assaults, I remained tear-free. I cry at everything else, though.

4. Once I cried at a tampon commercial.

5. A girl was trying out for the cheerleading squad, and she was sure she wouldn’t get in, but then—she did! I’m not sure how it related to tampons.

Comments

[jilbur]

re: glide/glid--man, we have to do some hardcore word activism on the strong verbs. What's up with all the pussy '-ed' stuff? All the best verbs are strong verbs.freezespeaksingstrikeThe list goes on and on. Dork that I am, my useless background in historical linguistics tells me that strong verbs used to rule da house and weak, dental-ending past tenses had to sit on the wall and eat scraps thrown off the table. Somehow the tide turned just because lazy folks couldn't be bothered to change a vowel or two instead of just tapping a tongue on the palate.Well, I say: It's time to fight back. I mean, you gotta choose your battles, right?Also: hate getting head-butted, and a 6 yr. old's skull gets no softer or lighter over the years. P.s.--my husband and I both bawled our heads off at the end of Finding Nemo ...*scuttles off under barrage of derisive laughter*

[alice]

Historical linguist in the house, yo!

I don't know why I wrote that. I just really wanted to.

There will be no derisive laughter here. Anyone laughs derisively at you, they know what they've got coming. (As she shakes her fist menacingly at invisible people.)

[Jess]

Well, to go even further with the linguistics comments... (and I feel ya on those, jilbur; I'm a linguistics major; just embrace the dorkiness :))... we all know English is a Germanic language, right? Well, in Dutch, also a Germanic language (with *many* links to English), 'to glide' is 'glijden'. So present tense is 'glijd(t)' and past is 'gleed', with none of those, as jilbur puts it, 'tongue' endings. That looks a bit more like your glide/glid idea to me.

So we could get all philosophical and say that you have an innate understanding of an older, 'purer' form of English without all the weird modernizations... or we could just say Dutch has nothing to do with this and I am once again rambling on about nothing. :)

[jilbur]

On the contrary, Dutch has everything to do with English: it's the only language that sounds like an American Pentecostal speaking in tongues.I have the street creds on this one--my brother-in-law is Dutch.

[Julia S]

Oh puh-lease. I have had it up to here with you cunning linguists.

(Chuckles at own cleverness while laughing derisively - sounds like the hiccups but it is SO not the hiccups.)

[alice]

Dude. I totally have an understanding of a purer form of English.

Why do I keep writing like that?

[hillary]

The past tense of "glide" is "glade," of course.

[the mighty jimbo]

shouldn't the plural of asparagus be asparagi?

really.

nothing better than a plate of fresh, chilled asparagi. with parmesan.

[Neil Cotton]

Glide - Verb, to GlideFuture - Glide (I will glide)Present - GlidingPast - Glode

however in books, which are focused on making things sound good, there is a distinctive lack between standard English, and "nice" English and you are likly to find the word "glade", and this is especially used to describe past tense of a woman walking. "She glade across the platform"

Hang-glide is a conjuntive, and therefore the past tense would be hangglode.

[Karen]

It was the freedom and the weightlessness that allowed the cheerleader to make the squad, because don't you feel free and weightless with trampoline-like gymnast abilities when you are using one?