My girls are constantly asking me what words mean. Words that they used to just ignore or whose meaning they got well enough in context, they’re now stopping to inquire about. (Maybe it’s a five-year-old thing.) What does “assume” mean? How about “agitated”? Or “express”?
And then, about a week ago: “What does ‘gay’ mean?”
The song “Jamaica Farewell” is on a new kids’ CD we have, and it begins: “Down the way, where the nights are gay, and the sun shines daily on the mountain top…” The girls love it, and sing it constantly. (So constantly that their preschool teacher decided to teach it to the whole class for their graduation ceremony in June.) But it was only after a few weeks of obsession that they stopped to ask about that one particular word.
