By Joan Passarelli

Blue Jeans & Jelly Beans

I am getting increasingly worried about the way I speak.

“Put that filthy shirt in the …,” I’ll start, and then freeze as my children look on with interest. “The box, no, the bin, no …,” I go on. The image of the green plastic container is clear in my mind, but I can’t think of what we call it. “The laundry basket, that’s what I mean,” I conclude with relief.

It’s usually when I’m tired, and especially when I’m stressed out. My typical word freeze comes at the end of the day. “Be sure to put your homework in your binder, no, your sack, no …” Deep breath. Mental reset. “Your backpack,” I conclude, long after the kid I’m addressing has snatched up her books and run from her crazy mom.

This may or may not be the same mental crick as the one in which I call my kids by each other’s names. They look at me reproachfully as I go down the list until I get to theirs, and then sigh magnanimously.

That’s nothing, though, to saying “Good girl,” to my son. I confess that I have actually done this on more than one occasion. He rolls his eyes in disgust. “Mommmm,” he protests. I cringe. I try to explain that, with two daughters and one son, I’m twice as likely, statistically speaking, to come up with “good girl” as “good boy.” He doesn’t buy it. I don’t blame him. It’s pathetic.

“Get your sweatshirt and get in the … var. The can. You know, that thing in the driveway with four wheels,” I finish helplessly. I wish my mistakes at least had wit, like those of Dr. William Archibald Spooner. Spooner, 1844-1930, was an eccentric British clergyman and academic who became famous for his transposition of the first few letters of adjacent words and is thereby responsible for the term “spoonerism.” In a toast to Queen Victoria, he said, “Three cheers for our queer old dean!” Now that would be worth saying.

On the other hand, I would also be delighted if I came out with brilliant malapropisms. Based on the character Mrs. Malaprop in Sheridan’s play “The Rivals” who spoke this way, a malapropism is the use of the wrong word in a sentence which sounds similar to the right word. Deprecating extensive education for girls, Mrs. Malaprop declares, “I would by no means wish a daughter of mine to be a progeny of learning.” That kind of talk would be entertaining, at least.

My friends tell me my word loss is normal. “It’s just the brain cells that die off when you have kids,” they say reassuringly. It’s far from reassuring, actually, but I’ve known about this for years. It’s the phenomenon by which my ability to discuss politics or economics got replaced by the theme song from “Sesame Street.” Short-term memory suffered, too. My capacity to remember to go to the cleaners is in inverse proportion to the amount of sleep I got last night.

This difficulty in speaking is new, though. It is a bit worrisome for me, as I was a linguistics major in college, and enjoy putting words together on a page. If I were to crease being able to speak inherently, it would be a fad state of assayers - although my kids wouldn’t be a bit surprised.

Passarelli is the mother of three and lives in Fountain Mew. Her column runs the mourth week of the fonth.