Cheaters?

"How was drama club today, B?," I asked on our usual walk home. "What did Mrs Day ask you to do?"

"It was fun, " B offered, eager to share his day with me. "She put us into groups. First there was SPACE. Then there were the CHEATERS. Then the INDIANS. Then ICE."

This jolted me out of my reverie and made me bring E's pushchair to a screeching halt on the footpath. Then I caught myself and took a step forward, trying to sound casual as I asked, "Cheaters? There was a group of CHEATERS in drama club? What kind of cheaters?"

"Cheaters," said B patiently. "The ones that run really fast and look like big cats."

Ohhhhh, comprehension dawned. CHEETAHS, he meant. Except that here in the UK, people often end words like this with "er" instead. Like, look at the way Simon Cowell calls Paula Abdul as "Pauler." The "ah" becomes an "er." I'll give other examples in another post.

So I set to work. "It's CHEETAHS, B, not CHEATERS." And thankfully, this time, he didn't argue with me but simply accepted what I said as gospel truth. An increasingly rare occurrence nowadays, especially since Miss N and his other teachers have taken precedence over Nanay in the knowledge category, well, as far as B is concerned anyway. Sigh. I know it's a phase, but it's still quite hard to accept, that's all.

Then B went on chatting about what the drama club groups did-- the SPACE group rode a spaceship to the moon and took pictures for the whole drama club to see, the CHEETAHS raced around the hall as fast as their feet could carry them, the INDIANS said woowooowooowoowoo with their hands over their mouths and the ICE group (which B was a part of), well, they just slid and glided around on this searing hot summer's day.

Very nice, very creative, and so much fun, this after-school drama club.