As Father’s Day approaches, I want to take the time to thank my daughter Chloe for helping to expand my vocabulary.
I’m a former journalist who’s now part of the corporate communications staff for a Fortune 100 company, and words are vital to my job. My quest for new words—and uses for words—is never-ending. I pick them up in news stories, dictionaries and books. I never imagined I’d get some gems from my two-year-old daughter—but I have.
Chloe’s contributions started early. When she was old enough to start walking and bumping her head into every piece of furniture possible, she was quick to turn around and admonish the culprit. “No bite!” she would tell the offending coffee table or chair.
That brings me to the neighborhood cats. A couple of black-and-white felines live across the street, and when Chloe was one, she loved to walk outside to see them. She picked up, through our animal-noises game, that cats say “Meow.” She then decided to call them “Meows.” Only she pronounced it “Mao,” as in Chairman Mao Tse-Tung, the late longtime ruler of communist China. Her paying homage to Mao seemed to make a little sense because her favorite cat on TV is Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese Cat. Needless to say, I now refer to all cats as “Maos.”
Chloe even has helped me reclassify the newspapers that appear in our driveway every morning. She and I typically walk down our steep driveway, and I stoop to pick up the papers while holding her steady. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution comes in a clear plastic wrapper, and the Wall Street Journal is packed in an orange wrapper. One morning I picked up the papers and Chloe said, “I want the orange paper.” She referred to the AJC as “Daddy’s paper.” That day at work, someone asked if I had seen the Journal, and I said, “Oh, the orange paper.” Maybe this one day will lead to a new moniker for reporting—“Orange Journalism.”
Two months ago, Chloe got a little brother. At first she was somewhat ambivalent toward him, but she quickly grew to be loving and caring toward him. His name is Whit, but Chloe calls him “Baby Whit.” And now we all do. For the record, Chloe gets this penchant for nicknaming people from her daddy. Over the years, I have given many people nicknames that have stuck. I’m overly proud of this ability and am happy I passed it on to Chloe.
Meanwhile, we’re hopeful the “Baby Whit” nickname goes by the wayside before he’s in college.
Most recently, Chloe taught us another good lesson about words and nicknames. She just learned that she has first and a last name, and she likes to say them together. “Chloe Wilbert,” she says with a sense of accomplishment. She also likes to say “Baby Whit Wilbert.” One night as she tried to fall asleep, she started calling to me. “Daddy Wilbert, where are you?”
Therefore, I’ve asked that my e-mail at work be changed to daddy_wilbert@homedepot.com.
