Digress - See? I Told You!

When I became a parent, I came to the painfully quick realization that kids will repeat anything they hear. So my son has learned from me that it's appropriate to tell his little sister, "Okay... you have two options. You can do it or you can get a spankin'." And you're really missing a lot of the adorableness by not actually hearing him say it. A three-year old threatening a one-year old with a spankin' is like adorable overload. He's also decided that since he has to say "yes sir" to me, then people should have to say that to him. So when someone tells him yes, he firmly replies, "Yes sir!" Or the slightly cuter version, which is "Yes what?"

And fortunately for my kids (and definitely for me), I don't use foul language and neither does my wife. So we can rest assured that little Andrew won't sound like a high-pitched ex-con. (Although, I must admit that an ex-con that sounded like my son would be hilarious.)

On a little sidenote tangent here, I want to point out that through 100-something posts, I've never used the phrase "but I digress." I always fight off the urge because I feel like bloggers overuse the phrase as a comedy crutch. So go ahead, search for "digress" at the top of my blog. I bet the only one that pops up is this post.

So the real story here is about my older brother, who learned from our father that people often say "Amen!" during sermons at church. And he learned that it usually coincides with a passionately spoken sentence (a.k.a. loud moment) by the person giving the sermon. So the time he decided to repeat this phrase (loudly) just happened to be after a very funny comment. Here's how it went:

Preacher (getting increasingly louder): "God doesn't really need us. He doesn't need our money! He doesn't need our time!! And he certainly doesn't need my pathetic preaching!!!"
Suddenly loud four-year old: "AMEN!"
Suddenly embarrassed parents: "..."

Classic. And unfortunately for me, only the adults remember it. There was no camera or audio recorder present at the time. But I will always remember that story; because it's the main reason you'll never hear me speak during a sermon. I don't want my son to learn that and use it against me.