“Buddy,” I call outside to my 7-year-old daughter. “Time for dinner.”
“Bud! Dinner!” I yell after seeing her whiz past the kitchen window on her scooter.
The speeding scooter passes by the window a half-dozen more times.
“Honey, we’re eating NOW!” I bellow through clenched teeth, desperately trying not to attract the attention of the entire neighborhood.
“I KNOW YOU CAN HEAR…” before I can finish my little speed demon zooms into the garage looks me square in the eye and in her best, bad Russian accent quips:
“Hello, my name Peggy. You got problem?”
Thanks, Discovery Card. You and your crazy commercial have my kid channeling heavy-set, bearded inept Romanian/Russian telephone customer service reps.
“Get in the house, please,” I say with a smirk.
“Supervisor is genius!” She yells out on her way to the kitchen. “I transfer!”
“TRANSFER!”
And to think, six and a half years ago I worried that she would never speak.
Hello irony, my name Mommy.
Not only is my little chatterbox on a 10 all.day.long. she’s now incredibly fascinated with accents.
When she’s not pretending she’s Eastern European, she speaks with a horrendous Italian accent.
“Mama, itza hot-ta in here, no?”
Or, her daily favorite: “Mama mia! My name-a Vito. You want-a da world’s best-a piz-za?”
Thanks, Garfield Show.
My daughter’s experimental accents are not her first foray into the world of multi-lingualism. When she was three years old she was an avid “Dora the Explorer” fan. During her dates with the hyper cartoon girl with the annoyingly high-pitched, too-loud voice and disproportionate head, my kid learned how to say estrella, Hola! and vamanos.
“That’s Spanish, Mommy!” my daughter would inform me after Dora implored pint-sized viewers to repeat after her.
At three, my daughter was quite proud of her growing grasp of languages, and wasn’t afraid to flaunt it.
During a visit to a friend’s home she had the chance to try on an array of elaborate dress-up clothes.
“You look stunning,” our ex-model friend gushed as my daughter wrapped a feather boa around her tiny shoulders.
“Fabulous!” “Gorgeous!” “Magnificent!”
The shower of compliments kept flowing and my daughter drank up each and every one.
Before the quasi fashion show came to an end, my daughter plunked a massive jewel encrusted silk hat on her little noggin.
“That is absolutely luxurious!” our friend raved.
My daughter just stood there smiling.
“Do you know what ‘luxurious’ means?” I asked my mini diva.
Without missing a beat, she replied: “Of course! It means ‘beautiful’– in Spanish.”
Ah, the language of love.