I learned a very important lesson today from a child.

It’s kind of a language lesson.

I was sitting in the kiddie pool at my grandchildren’s pool club.  The age limit for this pool is 6, so I know this little language expert had to be 6 or under.  I would guess he was 5-years old or so.

Anyway, kids were splashing and jumping and having a good ol’ time, but one child kept spashing the language expert in his face.  The language expert was very calm, but kept asking the splashing child to stop.

“Please stop,” the language expert said, several times, to no avail.

After a couple of minutes of this, I asked the splashing child to please stop.  The child kept splashing.

The language expert, finding the “please” and “stop” words totally inadequate means of communication, then looked directly into the eyes of the splashing child and said, very calmly, “I’d like to call you ‘stupid,’ but I will get in trouble from my mom.”

The splashing child stopped.  He turned to HIS mom, pointed to the language expert and said, “That boy just called me ‘stupid.'”

The language expert said, “No, I didn’t.”

The mom of the formerly splashing boy eyed the language expert, but didn’t seem to want any form of altercation as she asked her child to move to another part of the kiddie pool.

And that was that.  The splashing boy had stopped splashing.  And the language expert went on his merry way.

But I got to thinking about how people could use this language manipulation method everywhere they go.  Take a boss, for example, who is totally incompetent.  You’d just have to say, calmly, “I’d like to call you incompetent, but I don’t want to get fired.”

Or to an ice cream cashier who doesn’t bother to say, “Next in line,” when people are tripping over themselves to get to the register first.  You could say, calmly, of course, “I’d like to call you ‘lazy,’ but I don’t want you to spit in my ice cream.”

And maybe even to the person at the movie theater who just cannot stop talking and unwrapping candy and talking some more with a mouthful of popcorn and Sour Patch Kids.  You could say, “I’d like to call you ‘annoying,’ but I would totally embarrass my husband.” Calmly.

Calm is the key.

I’m thinking you’d always be off the hook, so to speak, because you’d never be actually saying what you’re actually saying.

I think that little language expert has something here… !!