Ka-way-way

When my sister was younger she always had this one dream of being a photographer one day. We were driving by Bates College and she had brought this up. The thing was that she would always pronounce photography wrong, and I don’t know why, but I would always think it was the funniest thing ever and me and my mom would always laugh together. The way my sister would pronounce it was “photo-grafy” and she was dead set on this being the actual pronunciation. She would get mad any time we tried to correct her but all we could do was laugh. But as she grew older, she learned the actual way to pronounce the word and now we can’t make jokes about it anymore. We still bring it up all the time because it’s funny to think about but a couple of years ago I might have had the worst pronunciation in my life that my family thought was so funny. Making fun of my sister for all those years would come back to haunt me

So one night my mom, sister, and I were watching “Penn and Teller” which is a show where magicians come on to perform and try to fool probably the best magicians in the world Penn and Teller. We were just laying on my moms bed waiting for the commerical to end. Then came this this one guy who came on who was very interested in silent letters in words. Then he started talking about the word “queue” and this is right before the moment before everyone loses it. The magician explains how the extra letters make no sense. Then the magician flips the chalk board to a big written out “queue” but this time he pronounces it “ka-way-way” and I was so baffled by this I thought it was a word for a second. I kept saying to myself “ka-way-way”? I convinced myself it was a word and asked my mom what the word was. She and my sister gave me the weirdest look and started dying laughing. Me on the other hand was so confused about what they were laughing at because I’m still sitting here trying to figure out what “ka-way-way” stood for. Then, she finally said “Ethan are you stupid” and explained that “ka-way-way” was “queue” and that he was just pronouncing it differently. I had never felt so dumb in my life and now the whole room was laughing, even me.

From this moment on my family has called me “ka-way-way” and that will probably be a living joke for the rest of my life. Every time I see my aunt or make a joke about someone she always has to call me it and I just live with it now I guess. I remember being at a baseball gave hitting and she called me it right before the pitch and I hit a home run. Laughter is needed in relationships, and it brings people together to enjoy moments of embarrassment for fun. Laughing doesn’t always have to be looked at as a bad thing, but can be looked at as a building block. So I hope you can take from my story of “ka-way-way” and learn that laughter is not always a bad thing.

Featured Image: “Point and laugh” by base77 is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0.