The other day, the GG and I were driving from Houghton Lake to Yooperland and he was reading a sign about Fort Michilimackinac and rather carelessly mispronounced “Michilimackinac”. I can’t remember how he said it (and he *knows* the correct pronunciation) but it dredged up some memories for me, so I corrected him and then I Twittered something about it. Why? Because I could. From my iPhone. Yes, I am obnoxious.

When I was a beach urchin, around eight or 10 or whatever, I had a slightly younger and very precocious friend who had skipped a school grade. Our families were friends and so were we. Except. Sometimes she could be pretty darn annoying, in the way that ultra-indulged children can be. Know any kids like that? Know any helicopter parents anyone? Er, I’ve been guilty in that way myself sometimes and maybe you could just possibly detect a little bit of envy here? Like, why couldn’t *I* skip a grade? [And yes, I could be annoying too.]

Anyway. My friend’s family was renting the yellow Stevens cabin and we walked up there for dinner one night. The adults were drinking martinis or whatever and carrying on (“yeeeeheehee”, etc.) and my friend and I were off somewhere in little kid land arguing over the pronunciation of Michilimackinac. Yes, that was fun! She was positive that it was “MichiMILimack”. Uh, no “naw” at the end? Who was right? We couldn’t come to an agreement. So we finally decided to ask the grownups. Yeah. To my absolute DISGUST, all of them including my OWN parents (who shouldda known better) agreed that it was “Michimilimack”. Yeeeeheehee. Get me another martini, please dear. Yes, I was ticked off!!!

And skunk cabbage? Check it out.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 14th, 2009 at 7:35 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.