Recently I was irked with our daughter. She was speaking and acting disrespectfully toward me during our out-of-state trip which required us to rent a minivan, of which we had our pick (being value-minded Taiwanese-Americans, we chose the top-of-the-line American model available to us, the Chrysler Pacifica). It was replete with leather seats, premium audio with satellite radio, Bluetooth cellphone connectivity, motorized sliding doors, motorized back hatch, rear A/C controls, heated seats (which we "threatened" to use on them in the hot muggy Colorado summer weather
if they misbehaved)... all foreign features for kids whose family cars are 14 - 22 years old!
Anyway, as we were driving I had gone on and on about how Evanglina needed to be more respectful to her parents... namely me at the time.
After some time of silence, I heard Evangelina comment in what I thought was a sarcastic tone, "I really like all this lecturing."
"What????!!!!!!" I nearly blew my top, and was about about to lay it into her afresh!
Thankfully, Jadon intervened in a rather calm and matter-of-fact way: "Dad, Evangelina meant 'luxury' when she said 'lecturing.'"
Deflated from my narcissism, I thanked him for his effective "Mina-ese"-to-English translation.
