Ex-peshully instead of ""especially."" Chipot-uhl instead of ""chipotle."" Lie-berry instead of ""library.""
Some people blame their mispronunciations on lisps, accents or laziness. Not me. Every time I pronounce ""epitome"" like it's spelled, I remind my smirking friends that I was one of ""those kids"" who read a lot. A bit too much.
When I was eight years old, I took a deep breath and finally asked my mom, ""What's a gween-ya pig?"" After unsuccessfully snorting back her laughter, she explained, yes, those curious animals were the same ""guinea"" pigs I had in my third-grade classroom.
""And anti-cues, what are those?"" Antiques, she said giggling, are old treasures, like the high-backed chairs we scoped out mere days before in a shop.
And this was way before the Internet as we know it, folks. Most of the time when I stumbled across a word I didn't know, I dutifully looked it up in a dictionary like teachers always told me I should.
Apparently, I never paid much attention to those handy little symbols over and between letters—the, uh, dictionary pronunciation guides.
Now before you get all, ""Wow, this girl is like that hermit-poet Emily Dickinson reincarnated with her dictionaries and shit,"" let me explain. I was active—all the usual ballet and gymnastics classes and eventually a marginally successful swimming ""career."" And I had friends, plausibly or not. But I had zero interest in team sports—all those lines and players on one field confused the hell out of me.
My first-grade soccer stint ended when I started skipping practices to pick chestnuts from the giant tree outside school while the other kids practiced at the park across the street. I split the nuts apart and pretended they were teacups, throwing raging tea parties with Andrea, the other rogue soccer player I recruited to join my ""Alice in Wonderland""-like forces.
So, no team sports for me.
Consequently, I read my elementary years away. I'm talking upwards of four books per day if left to my own devices, especially on summer weekends when I got tired of running through the sprinkler.
I read the entire ""Baby-sitters Club"" book series at least three times. I devoured ""Mr. Popper's Penguins"" at least once every six months. I began to seek out more emotionally charged books (hello, ""To Kill a Mockingbird), more imaginative tales (hey there, Roald Dahl).
Ultimately, as puberty progressed, I sought sexier—ahem, trashier—romance novels with sex scenes made of absurd similes: ""like a blooming flower,"" ""brawny as a stallion"" and ""engorged with sweetness like a honeybee hive"" (thanks, Johanna Lindsey).
Why learning a new skill like drawing, cooking or, say, devising water balloon attacks on the neighbor boys didn't occur to me, I'll never know. I still attribute my pitiful attempts at breads, cookies and cakes on the fact that I spent crucial mother-daughter bonding time avoiding the kitchen by scouring ""Oliver Twist"" for the fifth time while she made chocolate-chipped treats.
Similarly, I hid paperback books on my lap during art class, and for that reason, never successfully completed an art project, ever.
Granted, my embarrassing English-language flubs have garnered some benefits. When my now-boyfriend exclaimed his craving for whore-cotta ice cream, or ""horchata,"" I knew it was meant to be. My ""bosom swelled with passion,"" if you will.
But I'll probably always still be the girl wandering around the grocery store who asks the clerk where the poem-grenades are in the produce section.
…Er, pomegranates.
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