Very confusing
When I first started primary school there were a lot of things all the other kids seemed to instinctively know that I didn’t, but this one really took the biscuit. When another kid did something naughty, the rest of the class chorused, "Ummmmmmmmm!" Now, this wasn’t “um” as in, “Umm…..where did I put my car keys?” It was said with a most decisive intonation, depicting vividly the heady combination of disapproval and schadenfreude that a four-year-old feels in such circumstances.

I was completely confused by this the first time it happened. I started school on the same day as everybody else in my class, so I certainly hadn’t missed anything, and yet this was a word that the others all seemed to have in their vocabulary, and which they said in perfect unison, whilst I sat there thinking, “What…the…..oh, ok then – UMMMMM!”

It wasn’t just the kids who resorted to strange vocabulary – the teachers were just as guilty. The standard word for registering disapproval was, “Er.” Again, this wasn’t “Er….what day is it?” It was a short, clipped, extremely harsh sound, said at the beginning of a sentence with a slight pause after it, as in, “Er – get on with your work,” “Er – leave the boys alone,” and, “Er – sniffing Pritt-Stick is not hygienic.” Sometimes a teacher walking into a classroom full of rioting five-year-olds would make their presence felt simply by standing in the doorway and saying, “Er” just on its own, and waiting for the chaos to die down due to their authoritative presence.

Everybody at that school seemed to have a real penchant for using words normally reserved for moments of confusion in a confident, decisive and authoritative manner. What a hugely interesting psychological phenomenon. I think I feel a PhD thesis coming on…
(grandmasterfluffles Come to my Armageddon party on, Fri 1 Apr 2005, 22:27, Reply)