My wife’s only parenting blunder involves the potentially hazardous use of scissors.

My wife is quite nearly a perfect mother.

She worries a little more than is necessary, but this appears to be a prerequisite to mothering, and her car is littered with the detritus of tiny people, but I suspect that this will not unduly influence my children in any long-term way.

Otherwise, I have almost never objected to a single parenting decision that she has made. I find that remarkable.

 

In fact, the only objectionable parenting decision that she had made (and continues to make) is her inexplicable and slightly insane insistence on referring to scissors as “a scissor.”

Scissor is a verb. It means to “cut with scissors” or to “move one's legs back and forth in a way resembling the action of scissors.”

The noun that this verb references is scissors.

There is an ‘S” at the end of the word. 

Elysha’s made this error for as long as I’ve known her, and she is hardly to blame. I’ve heard her mother refer to scissors in the same way many times. While I’ve always found it a little strange, I’ve been able to ignore this crack in her otherwise pristine armor.

But now that impressionable minds are at risk, I’m concerned that my children will go forth into the world asking their kindergarten teachers if they can borrow “a scissor” rather than a pair of scissors.

It worries me.

In order to counteract this problem, I attempt to use the word correctly in the presence of my children as often as possible, and I always provide the correct use of the word whenever Elysha uses it incorrectly.

“Could you hand me that scissor, Matt”

“Sure, I’ll grab those scissors for you, honey. Here you go. A pair of scissors just for you. Enjoy those scissors.”

In the grand scheme of things, it’s a fairly small thing compared to the parenting mistakes that I watch people make on an almost daily basis, but as a person who makes his living with words, it’s still a concern.

The future happiness of my children is at stake.