My wife is quite nearly a perfect mother.
She worries a little more than necessary, but this seems to be a prerequisite for mothering, and her car is littered with the detritus of tiny people, but I suspect this will not unduly influence my children in any long-term way.
Otherwise, I have almost never objected to a single parenting decision that she has made. I find that remarkable.
In fact, the only objectionable parenting decision that she had made (and continues to make) is her inexplicable and slightly insane insistence on referring to scissors as “a scissor.”
Scissor is a verb. It means to “cut with scissors” or to “move one’s legs back and forth in a way resembling the action of scissors.”
The noun this verb refers to is scissors.
There is an ” s” at the end of the word.
Elysha’s made this error for as long as I’ve known her, and she is hardly to blame. I’ve heard her mother refer to scissors that way many times. While I’ve always found it a little strange, I’ve been able to ignore this crack in her otherwise pristine armor.
But now that impressionable minds are at risk, I’m concerned that my children will go forth into the world asking their kindergarten teachers if they can borrow “a scissor” rather than a pair of scissors.
It worries me.
To counteract this problem, I try to use the word correctly around my children as often as possible, and I always correct it whenever Elysha uses it incorrectly.
“Could you hand me that scissor, Matt”
“Sure, I’ll grab those scissors for you, honey. Here you go. A pair of scissors just for you. Enjoy those scissors.”
In the grand scheme of things, it’s a fairly small thing compared to the parenting mistakes I watch people make almost daily, but as a person who makes his living with words, it still concerns me.
My children’s future happiness is at stake.
