Crime and Punishment

Speaking English in this house is generally a no-no. However, people have been getting away with it for years, especially since Gets-Away-With-It was born. (My sister's maiden name). However, when the prospect of losing the mother tongue becomes apparent, drastic measures are taken. Several years ago, I was commissioned to invent a fun way to punish language offenders. I came up with a silly game consisting of only one rule: If you say an English word and don't immediately correct yourself, you have to come up with five synonyms in Russian, or else meet the dreaded "or else." You also get a point. At the end of the week, the person with the most points gets put up for adoption or crossed out in the will or has to wash dishes or something.

The game was an instant hit, and my sister struggled a bit and got back into the speaking Russian mindset. Then the game was abandoned. (strings come in, melancholy and mysterious)

Well today, a comeback was staged. Seeing as everyone in this house is just full of English words to say, there was really no other choice, if only to give our ears a short respite. The effects were immediate: dinner was highly anomalous. Contrary to custom, it wasn't Michelle's story-telling hour. Instead, we were treated to horror-movie silence, with everyone poised to pounce on each other's throats at the first non-Slavic syllable. I'm now suffering from a mild case of middle-school gossip withdrawal and cat-got-your-tongue disease.

Actually, being a gentleman of outstanding wisdom who thinks before he opens his mouth, I pretty much rock at this game. The other three however, live a life full of adventure. To even things out, they united against me this evening and made me read The Time Traveler's Wife out loud to them till their scores didn't look so pitiful.


My sister's been assigned a project on a most fascinating and fresh topic - why tobacco is bad. She needs the whole shebang - poster, slogan, a pair of fresh crispy-black lungs, and of course an essay. She came to me for ideas, her own being full of blood and guts and oral cancer. After throwing up all over her shoes, I gave her a slightly dangerous suggestion.

I figured that everyone's going to be writing about tobacco staining the back of your head yellow and making your toenails become self-aware and about oral cancer of course; everyone's going to be dragging in their uncle Carl who talks through a harmonica in his throat and the infant corpses of their unborn brother or sisters. Everyone's going to be showing off their collection of family tumors, and in that case there's really just a slim chance that hers is the biggest, especially since we only patronize hard drugs like sugar in this house.

So I told her to write about how it's too expensive a habit to maintain. Now I'm thinking it may backfire. On her. It seemed like a good idea at the time but knowing the conservative audience (her teachers), I'm starting to think I just signed her up for her first mandatory appointment with a psychiastrist. Oh well, too late now, we're not due to talk for another month.

By the way, there's an excellent article on writing that everyone should read before they write anything at all: "How to Say Nothing in 500 Words."