When my children were tiny, they often used words or expressions that were. . . almost correct. In fact, some of their words and expressions were better than the actual word or expression they were trying for.

We still use some of them in our everyday speech.

For example, if we need to go from the first floor to the third floor of a department store, we often step onto the velvagator. You know, those moving stairs?

One hot summer day, there was a pesky fly in the house. After watching his father bat it away several times, my tiny toddler son finally spoke up:

“Daddy, why don’t you flice it?”

Um, say what?

“Flice it, Daddy!”

And how does one do that?

“With the watter, Daddy. Flice it with the watter.”

And he did, and all was well.

We still call it the watter, and we still flice with it.

And now I’m in the mood to watch “Clash of the Titans.” You know, Clash. As in, “Anne of Green Gables.” Anne. Clash. Anne. Clash. Anne. “Susannah of the Mounties.” Susannah. Clash. Anne. “Tess of the d’Urbervilles.” Tess. Clash. Anne. Susannah. Clash

Ah, sweet semantical grammar: how it can betray us if we don’t pay attention to the details.

Harry Hamlin will always be “Clash” to me, forever and always. I first met Clash while staying at the Indianapolis Hyatt, helping to chaperone the yearly high school Beta Convention. After spending possibly eight days riding up and down in their Great Glass Elevator a la Charlie Bucket, my toddlers and I crashed on one of the two twin beds in that grand suite and watched Perseus Clash slay Medusa and defeat the Kraken, all the while having a torrid illicit behind-the-scenes-but-everyone-on-the-planet-knew-it affair with Aphrodite who later bore his child out of wedlock. My tiny son misunderstood the title, and Harry Hamlin became Clash. I am not a Clash fan, because a celebrity’s real-life behavior completely colors any character he/she portrays, and I consider Clash just one more horndog who can’t keep it in his pants, (ever and always a choice!) but the memory of that night at the Hyatt, three people on one twin bed, watching Clash pretend to love Andromeda whilst actually lusting away for the older woman who played Aphrodite and who had no ethics either, will stay with me forever.

It’s after four in the afternoon. I really need to get dressed. I’m going to the theater with Mom tonight, and I’ve got to do enough laundry so we can make a path through the piles before she picks me up. I hate it when we have to step on the clothes to get from the garage to the stairway. Not that it ever happens here.