Everett was singing a song I love from his seat at the back of the van. I don’t know now what song it was, but it was one I like. And he deliberatly adulterated the words, just to be funny. I don’t know either how he adulterated them, but he was trying to be funny, and he completely reversed the meaning.
Well, it called for a response. I wasn’t annoyed. I smirked at him in the rear-view and called him a smart-alek.
“What’s a smart-alek?” he wanted to know.
“A smarty-pants,” I said.
“That’s a bad word,” he said.
“Oh?”
“It’s a bad word, Mom,” he insisted.
“Why?” I asked him.
“Because it means that you’re really smart, and that your pants are too loose, so it’s a bad word.”
So is it worse to have loose pants if one is smart? If one’s pants are loose, is it best just to be stupid about that and other things, in general? Or is it just loose pants that are the key offenders here, and the “smart” has nothing to do with it?
I’m so confused.
