I understand him just fine. I have no idea why everyone else has so damn much trouble figuring out what he’s trying to tell them. Give it a little effort, please. For example, when little Henry is wearing his bike helmet and yelling “mop” over and over again it couldn’t be more obvious that he’s talking about the strap. Mop means strap and he wants it fastened. What’s so tricky about that? “Mop”=“strap”. Another easy one is “wheat”. Do you really think a kid of just over one year old is talking about his favorite grain while pointing at his shoes? “Wheat” means “feet”. He’s either telling you that socks and/or shoes go on your “wheat” or that his toes went boom into something and now his “wheat” hurt. And how about “baa”? Context is everything. If he’s talking about our dog Beela (actually Bailey, but he calls her Beela), and then says “baa”, he means that Beela likes to chase balls and if you’ve spent more than two minutes with Beela, you would know that already. Or if he’s hungry, meaning he just pointed to his mouth and made an obvious eating sound, and he says “baa”, he wants to eat some pasta. Duh. He’s not telling you he wants to eat a ball for Christ’s sake. Or if he says “baa” while looking for bugs, he’s clearly talking about roly-polys which everyone knows curl up into a ball to protect themselves. And of course it’s also the noise a sheep makes. So unless you’re holding a roly-poly while singing “Baa baa black sheep”, throwing a ball to Beela and snacking on pasta all at the same time, it shouldn’t be so darn difficult to figure out what he wants. Or when he’s yelling “jew, jew” at you frantically, he’s not singling you out because of your religion. He’s telling you he wants some juice. Apple, orange, whatever you’ve got will be just fine, he’s not a picky kid. So “jew”=”juice”. That’s so obvious I can’t believe I felt the need to include it here. But sadly I did. So next time you have the privilege of hanging with Henry, help the kid out, okay? Remember it’s not him, it’s you.
Henry’s Words
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