EMBARRASSING STORIES | Part 1

I have a pretty big habit of mispronouncing words, especially if I haven't heard the word before. That's basically what today's post is about. It's an old story, and if any of the people I went to school with read, this they may remember it, but I don't think I have actually told many other people this story. 

In high school, I took ancient history. Looking back I think I would have enjoyed modern history a lot more, but it wasn't exactly offered at the time from memory. I could be wrong.

The class was small, about six of us, and the majority of us were girls, so we were all in this one small room which allowed us to have a lot of help if we weren't understanding something. We started doing this module on Alexander the Great and were learning about his childhood when this little mispronunciation happened.

On this particular day, we were looking at the story where Alexander wins his horse Bucephalus. If you don't know the story, Bucephalus was offered to Alexander's father for a large sum, only there was a catch. Bucephalus wouldn't let anyone ride him, he was spooked a lot and anyone who managed to climb up onto his back was thrown. Alexander's father was unable to ride him and wouldn't take the bait, but Alexander had taken a liking to the horse.

He made a wager with his father, that his father would pay for the horse if Alexander was able to ride the horse without being thrown. If he failed, Alexander would pay for the horse out of his own pocket.

The people around him were shocked as the young prince walked towards the horse and spoke to him in soft tones, calming him. As he did he changed the position the horse stood in. You see, as Alexander had been watching Bucephalus he had noticed that the horse was spooked by shadows. As an added precaution, Alexander dropped his cloak and in front of everyone he climbed up onto the horse's back and was able to ride him.

Alexander's fathers was impressed by the feat and agreed to buy the horse for him.

As part of this class, we had to read copies of texts from that time. So I was just focusing on making sure what I was reading made sense, I didn't realise that when I pronounced Bucephalus as Buce-Phallus it was wrong until my teacher started laughing. None of us realised what it was as funny as what it was. We waited a few minutes until he had calmed down, he corrected me and when we asked what was so funny, he told us to look up the word phallus.

I brushed it off until the next lesson when one of my classmates looked at me and said that I had majorly mispronounced the name. That day, I went to the library and looked up the word phallus and I realised that I had renamed Alexander the Great's horse after a penis.

Since that day I have always remembered to pronounce Bucephalus as Boo-cef-a-lus but I will never forget the day that I called him Buce-phallus.

Until next time,

(aka - Sophie)

Christmas Decorating Story Time

I've known since I first got together with T that he didn't like Christmas.

What I mean by that is that he has never liked the decorating side of Christmas. He enjoys getting together with family and all of that, he just doesn't like the decorating side of things. I, on the other hand, enjoy decorating a Christmas tree, so we're totally a match made in heaven.

Even though T doesn't like decorating, he handles the fact that I do by teasing me and this year was no different, only decorating this year didn't get off to a great start.

On Friday I asked T if he could get the stuff down so I could decorate while he was working. He totally forgot to do it so I had to get up on the ladder and I have no concept of balance. I'm at the point now that no one is surprised when I hurt myself.

After getting everything down I brought it in and discovered that the very pretty fairy lights I bought last year were a tangled mess. And I do mean a mess. See these were those ones that weren't covered in plastic. Those pretty, dainty ones, where the wire was out and they were tiny and look delicate and they have to be wrapped up properly otherwise they become a tangled mess, and when T packed everything away he didn't wrap them up properly.

I was annoyed, really annoyed by that. T is what I jokingly call borderline OCD. He likes things a particular way, so him not packing the lights away properly annoyed me.

After fighting with them for an hour and telling T our new rule is that he isn't allowed to touch the Christmas Tree to pack it away, even if that means he has to wait until February for it to disappear, I went out to buy new pretty light and had to settle for stars. All of the lights I wanted were gone.

Frustrated I went to run a couple of errands and came back a lot calmer - which was good because T had arrived back home. The Christmas Tree then went up and life continued on.

Only in my decorating, I forgot to factor in two other household members - well, actually one household member. Arlo didn't want a bar of the Christmas Tree and we had to coax him past it for 24 hours in order to go outside because the room where the Christmas Tree is is also the way out to our backyard.

Daphne, on the other hand, took to the tree very well. A little too well. By the end of the day she had secretly squirreled away two ornaments and destroyed them. This then lead to a late night, small argument between T and I in which I got frustrated with him because instead of barricading the tree he decided that the only way to stop Daphne from getting the ornaments was to hide the tree in my office. I love him but he didn't need to hide the tree.

The next day I brought it back out, created my barricade and there have been no more ornament deaths in 24 hours. So things did not go as planned but I did get the tree up and T is thankfully dealing with my use of our dining chairs.

Until next time,

(aka - Sophie)