SHING! CHE-KANG!

When Cable and Parker recap their days for me, the play-by-play is often centered around what happens on the playground, events of which I usually have at least a bystander's knowledge (major perk of your children's class sharing the same playground as your own class). For the boys, this means the report can only be embellished so much when your mother was sitting 5 yards away when it all went down. For me, even though I know how the story's going to go, I'm always entertained by their enthusiasm and their vivid language that only preschool-aged boys can invent.

For example, despite our efforts to suppress the combat brigades that meet up in the back corner of the grassy area, inevitably a battle will go down before teachers can be heard shouting across the playground, "Find a different way to play, or every last one of you can come sit RIGHT HERE!!!"

The past few times Cable and Parker have spoken of these delightful games -- theirs usually involve dinosaurs, pirates, or a mix of both -- I've heard that wonderful boy language (envision a sword fight while you read this):

"Then I SHINGED him, Mommy, and Cable said "Don't you SHING me, Pah-kooh! And then he was a ginormous T-Rex and he CHE-KANGED me! And I said "I don't like it when you CHE-KANG me, Tyrannosaurus Rex! I will SHING you so hard again!"

Now I've spent a lot of time around a lot of kids, having been a teacher for... eight years now. And not once have I ever heard one say this, which confirms my suspicion that Cable and Parker are just slightly off the beaten path.