I wonder if Rosetta Stone has a program for it

I know I’ve mentioned before how sarcastic my family is.  I’m talking about the family I grew up with, although the Brights speak Sarcasm, they’re not quite as fluent.  When you’re at a Bright Family gathering there aren’t quite as many ironic eyebrows and dry retorts as there are when surrounded by my mother’s family.  We’re lethal.  Let’s say Dorothy Parker, if you’re not familiar you should be, would make an excellent honorary member and she would have fit right in.

Because I refuse to talk down to my children, I still use my multiple syllabic vocabulary and I don’t usually temper my sarcasam.  Hey, I figure they’re going to need to be able to conversewith my family and besides, I think it’s good for them to know a second language. I believe in total immersion when it comes to learning another language. 

Sassy speaks sarcasm but she often slips into the easy trap of bitchy and everyone knows that’s the lesser of the two dialects.

The Bandit is just beginning to get the hang of it and try it out for himself.  The only problem is he hasn’t gotten down the inflection required to effectively communicate the irony. He says the right words just in the wrong tone and with weirdly sweet facial expressions.

For example, we were in the car on the way to school yesterday.  He was in the third row seat way in the back holding his plate of toasted and quartered Pop Tart because he’d spent the entire morning screwing around instead of getting ready for school.  I hit a bump in the road and apparently his plate went flying.

“Thanks, Mom, I dropped my breakfast.” Now you can read his comment and know, especially based on the topic of this post, that he said it with irony.  But imagine him saying it with a smile on his face and a cheerful tone of voice from way in the back of the car. It was very confusing. 

I spend a great deal of time staring at him with a perplexed expression and saying, “I’m not following you, little man.”