I have completely retooled my Patreon rewards and goals! Become a Patron now and you can help me release more eBooks of my comics and sketches, bonus monthly Patron-Only comics, an album of cover songs, a LOST EPISODE OF THE HIJINKS ENSUE PODCAST, and MORE! Read the details HERE or just check out my Patreon HERE.
About 50,000 people saw my last comic on Facebook. That’s weird. If you haven’t liked the Sharksplode page on Facebook yet, it’s HERE. It calls to you. Go to it. Be with it.
I made this comic under the assumption that all parents feel this way as their kids get older and less cute, but maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’m some sort of cruel sociopath that values humor/entertainment value over substance. NAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!! No way. I’m great.
When my kid was younger, there were certain things she said and did that, while SUPER incorrect, were SUPER cute. These are the things we NEVER corrected her on. Calling snacks “Owms” because of the sound we’d make when we’d try to convince her something tasted good? NEVER CORRECTED. Sitting on the toilet backwards and putting the shower curtain around herself for privacy? NEVER CORRECTED. Pronouncing her last name as “Want Some” instead of “Watson”? NEVER EVER CORRECTED. When things are that cute, no matter how wrong they are, you leave them be. You let them run their natural course.
There’s something about babies that makes your brain go bananabonks. Maybe it’s the psychological effect of being ultimately validated, needed and essentially worshipped as the end-all be-all by this little, squishy bundle of poops. Or maybe it’s an evolutionary holdover that just releases a butt-cram of endorphins when you whiff that new baby smell. Something designed to make sure cave-mom and cave-dad didn’t just put the cave-baby down in the woods and walk away forever when it made too much noise.
I firmly believe this is one of the main reasons people have multiple kids. Many parents miss the validation or the newness or the warm fuzzy lizard brain good-time feels and just go, “Hey! Let’s make a new one! Then, when that one stops being tiny and helpless, we’ll make AN EVER NEWER ONE!!!” And thus, Humanity crumbled beneath the weight of 7 billion bodies, birthed simply so someone else could smell a fontanelle.
SHARKSPLODERS: What dumb and wrong things do you kids do/did YOU do as a kid that was left uncorrected for entertainment value?
I used to call forward rolls ‘tipitails’. I was 18 when my mother finally told me the word should be ‘tipple-tail’ (is this a Yorkshire word?) and that she never corrected me because she thought I was being cute. EIGHTEEN, Mum! Not cool.
I’ve never heard of those, so I would’ve believed you.
I didn’t know my mothers’ parents real last name until pretty late into childhood. I had always known them as “Grandpa and Grandma Garfield” due to my grandmothers obsession with Garfield figures and comics. I still remember the day I realized “Wait, that CAN’T be their last name” on the ride to their house, and I asked my mother what their real last name was.
It could be, that is a perfectly cromulent last name.
I didn’t fully realize that I wasn’t related to the my grandmother’s husband until I was 8 or so.
When describing something large my wife and I would frequently use the word “ginourmous.” When our oldest daughter was about 13 or 14 one of said either “gigantic” or “enormous” and she asked what it meant.
We realized that for her entire life we had always used the made-up word and she didn’t believe us when we said there were actually two different real words that sounded fake to her.
Ginormous is in the OED.
Well now I need an OED.
My 2-yr-old says restronaut instead of restaurant and this shall NEVER BE CORRECTED.
Restronaut. And now I have a new career goal.
My wife and I were both VERRRRRRY disappointed when my son stopped pronouncing “lemonade” as “dabbledeen”.
Dabbledeen sounds WAY fancier. Like I top shelf liquor.
Our toddler calls all gator-like creatures “croc-a-locks” or when the cuteness goes up to eleven: “croc-a-lockies” and I’ll be damned if I ever correct her.
P.s. This holds true for her favorite vegetable “broc-a-lock”
It’s like an adorable version of Clockwork Orange!
A Clockwork Orange IS the adorable version of A Clockwork Orange!
My son is 8 and he still says “should-posed to” instead of “supposed to”. He’s always said it, and it’s just so uniquely him that I have a hard time correcting him on it.
Ours took forever to learn how to say the word ‘knife’ (in fact it took a large biker friend quite a while talking about Norman Knife for them to get it) instead they would say ‘life’. There was no way sitting at the table being asked “can I get a life please?” was going to get old.
My buddies 5 y/o always says “I died you” instead of I killed you when playing with my kids. He hates it, but the rest of us keep laughing.
My 2 y/o keeps saying “one, two, nine, five, GO!!!” My wife keeps trying to correct him, but the older boys are encouraging it because FUNNY HAHA reasons.
I’m just waiting for “Two, nine, five, I died you!” I’ll probably lose my shit.
My mother let me go on saying “croc-a-dil-er” and “alligalator” instead of crocodile and alligator for YEARS. Not only that, she kept random photos of alligators and crocodiles around JUST to point at them and go “honey what’s this?” for a good laugh.
She bursts into hysterics when we see them in the zoo to this day
See above, but are you my transgender future baby from the FUTURE???(
Opterhopter for helicopter.
But the best was the day I strolled past his room and heard him playing with his stuffed doggie. Had to stop and made sure I was hearing him correctly when he kept going, “Bitch! Biiiitch!” (in that calling your dog sing song voice). When I asked him why he was calling his dog Bitch, he insisted it was his dog’s name, because of his uncle’s bulldog, he INSISTED the dog’s name was Bitch. A mishearing of the dog’s actual name, Butch. SO very hard to stop laughing. Even harder to force myself to correct him, if only for the sake of not having to hear shit from my husband’s mother later.
Then when he got older…oh man he tried out all sorts of swears on us, and after a few lessons on the consequences of calling his mother a bitch, he lost his temper with me one day and proceeded to yell, “BAD WORD! BAD WORD! BAD WORD! BAD WORD!!!” What to do? Punish the intent to bend the rules, or reward teh attempt to not break the rules? Don’t remember what I did except nearly falling down laughing.
I remember my little sister not being able to pronounce my name, so instead of Josh I was Jooch. The name stuck my entire family called me Jooch for years. My aunt still does in fact, some 19-20 years later…
My son used to call his grandparents “Gramma and Crappa.” My mom loved this so much. She was devastated when he stopped.
Oh, also, for about a year my daughter thought “stroller” was a number.
My mother still fondly talks about when I used to call grapes “bups”. That was 30 years ago and she hasn’t gotten over it.
When my sister and I were kids, we pronounced it Kenfucky Fried Chicken.
Which everyone in our family found -absolutely hilarious- and didn’t stop us until we stopped lisping on our own.
When our son was very little he called the ATV “Daddy’s TVTV,” which was too adorable to correct although sadly he eventually figured it out on his own. Now his little sister (at six) still calls spaghetti “pas-ghetti” and says “bloo-tiful” for beautiful and will also never be corrected, although I assume she too will eventually figure it out.
Myself, I didn’t stop calling linoleum “ninoleum” until, like, a few years ago, and it took a forcible effort of will to correct myself. I knew how to spell it; I just somewhere along the line internalized my original childhood mispronunciation really, really hard.
Frankly I’m *still* convinced it should be “ninoleum”.
My son calls “spaghetti” “pa-sketti”. I tried to correct him like twice and then I was like “you know what? No. This is adorable, lets keep it.”
My nephew calls ‘smarties’ ‘farties’. I always keep some nearby because a) smarties are delicious and b) I will never get tired of hearing “can I please have some farties?”.
The resident toddler hasn’t QUITE mastered Big People Speak yet, but we get lectures on the nature of the universe daily in Baby Talk. As ready as I am to understand & be understood, I’m kind of going to miss it.