Chief Dobber

"Mum......?"

Most sentences spoken in this house starts with "Mum.....?" and it drives me insane. Time and time again, I have instructed, invited and demonstrated the correct and less irritating way in which to engage with me linguistically. And this does not include the need for me to grant them permission to continue the conversation. 

"Just launch right in!" I tell them. They get it, but they cannot execute it.

"Mum.....?"

SIGH! 

"Yes Harry......."

"If I had 32 pairs of rabbits, how many rabbits do I have?"

Now, when Jack was born he was diagnosed with a significant hearing loss which totally freaked the bejeezuz out of us and we thought we were going to have to learn sign language. I even rented Children of a Lesser God and wept into my wine.

But a gazillion hours of speech therapy at The Shepherd Centre saw Jack up and talking like Oprah on speed. Sometimes a little too much. And because he is the youngest and loves a rule, most of his speech is taken up with DOBBING.

Now for those of you who may be reading this from beyond the Australian shores, here is a bit of info that I stole from Wikipedia.

Dobber may refer to:

• Dirt Dobber, a wasp that builds its nest from mud

• Dobber, a marker for marking cards at a bingo hall also known as a dibber.
• Dobber, Used in Scotland as a slang word referring to the male genitalia.
• Dobber is a derogatory Australian term for somebody who reports people to the authorities for (usually minor or socially acceptable) wrongdoings.

I swear if dobbing was an Olympic Sport, Jack would be packing his bags for London right now.

Which brings me to the all time ridiculous dob, which was this morning. When he dobbed on the cat for trying to eat a squinkie. Now normally I tell him to go away when he comes-a-dobbing but I believe that he was correct in alerting the authorities for such atrocious behaviours towards small rubbery characters. And with a big trip looming next week, I did not fancy dropping a wad of cash at the vets to remove said squinkie from any intestinal tracts. So I found Chuy and took the squinkie out of his possession.


"He needs to be punished." Jack declared. Seriously. 


Now, although very mundane and not very effective, punishment in our house consists on going and sitting on your bed and thinking about what you have done. The time period allotted to bed sitting punishment ranges from 5 minutes to 5 hours, totally depending on whether I remembered that you were there.... or not.


So I took Chuy the Cat into Jack's room, with Jack closely following me, and put him on the bed, where he spent a good minute or two licking his own "dobber" (cat is Scottish you see) before curling up into a ball and drifting off to sleep.


I had a little chat to Jack about how "No-one likes a dobber..." (apart from Scotsmen) . And our chat was interrupted by Harry who wandered in and said,


"Mum.....?"


SIGH "Yes Harry....."


"Have you seen my pants?"

The accused and the informant in happier times

Who is the chief dobber at your place?

Do your kids start every sentence with "Mum....?"