Four-year-olds have the greatest way with words. One night last week, The Babe was showing me and my Dad a scrape on the right side of his abdomen. It looked like someone had made a serious attempt to emblazen his side with an equal sign, about one inch in length. Frankly, it looked pretty weird. Harry Potter scar weird.
In describing that he had hit the handles of the bicycle he is attempting to learn to ride, he got our attention by saying "Here's where I damaged myself."
In all my days, I've never heard anyone use the word damage to describe a self-inflicted, accidental wound. FedEx damages packages, cookies are damaged and broken into tiny bits, and cars are routinely damaged in parking lots.
People, on the other hand? We're wounded, hurt, and injured. But we're simply not damaged. Damage implies something that would take a lot of money and/or time to fix.
An injury will heal, as will a wound or a boo-boo. Damage? Not so much.
But, hey. When you are four and you know multi-syllabic ways of describing strange results of bike wrecks, you can be sure your much older Mom is not going to correct you. Even though my vocabulary/English/anal-retentive alarms were all going off.
Instead, I just smiled and say "WOW! That is some bad damage."
If I know anything, I know it is never, ever, ever good to damage a male ego.
Especially the ego of a man-in-training.
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