Saturday, May 12, 2007

Digital, Digit, Dige

Years ago a mom brought her young son into my Ft. Myers for information. He was about 4 or 5 years old, but he was dressed in a suit with a bow tie. His mother told me he insisted that he dress that way. OK, no problem. His name was Donald but his mother told me they called him "Digit".
The Digit nickname came from the fact he was a second or a third of a line of Donalds and the family hung the "Digital" name on him, or maybe he wanted it himself, I don't remember. But the number generated the Digit moniker. Well, Digital became Digit and that became Dige. Which brings him around to us.
Digit was a pretty smart kid and we liked him a bunch. He started in the Little Dragons class and stuck around long enough to work his way up to the big kids program before they relocated. Like all the children, he learned our student pledges. Those pledges are fairly generic now, a lot of schools use them. One includes a line that they will "avoid anything that would reduce my mental health and physical growth."
Lots of kids, as they grow up, manage to use a bad word or two in front of their mother. Digit was no exception. His mother came in and told me a story about how Digit said a bad word and she was about to wash his mouth out with soap when he exclaimed "Mom! This won't be good for my mental health or physical growth!"
Mom thought about that for a second and said she had to agree. So Digit escaped with a lecture and Mom and I had a good laugh. Out of the mouths of babes....

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