Playing with language

A few weeks ago my four year old was practicing new and unique nicknames/gentle insults. I had explained to him that we sometimes make up names for people we like and it's ok. He decided to practice on me.

A few names in, he called me a "CarHead." Wow. I couldn't pass that one up. We stopped then and there and I "parked".

What does a CarHead look like? Do they walk or do they drive around on their heads? How do they see?

Pretty soon we came up with a visual image. A CarHead is a person but they have an upside down car for a head. When they get tired of walking, they stand on their heads and drive around. Can't you just see that imagery there?

A few days after that I was struggling with angst - lots of decisions to be made in a very short time frame. This same kid of the CarHead fame looked at me and said, "Mommy, you're a "Conundrum Head." I had to laugh, because no other word or combination of words could possibly draw a better picture of me in that moment, and it took a four year old (albeit with a precocious vocabulary) to be able to create that image so well.