The problem with having parents who are writers

Not my kid. But face was the same.

Over the weekend we were all driving somewhere* and my 5 year old whippersnapper was in the back looking through the best backseat entertainment ever for 5 year olds: a toy figurine catalog. He was oooing and ahhing over various dragon and knight stuff and every time he'd see something new he'd say "Oh man this is awesome!"  "Oooh, this is awesome!"  "Oh my God! This is awesome!"

*somewhere = shopping for Mommy. 

After about the third or fourth awesome, the thesaurus installed in my brain clicked into overdrive. "You know," I suggested, "Maybe it's not just awesome, but it's sensational."

He said nothing, but his face in the rear view mirror had him looking like he'd smelled one his baby brother's diaper bombs.

After a moment, he resumed his regular "awesome" programming.

"Oooh!" I interrupted. "It's radical!"

"Stop it, Mommy," he said.

"OMG! It's top notch! Really quite amazing!"

"Stop it."

"This is excellent!"

"Stop it."

"Amazing. Fabuloso. Tremendous!"

"Stop it, Mommy!"

"Splendid!"

"Stop!"

"Breathtaking!"

"Stop!"

"Magnificent!"

"Stop!"

"Spectacular!"

"Stop!"

 "Brilliant!"

"Stopppppppppppppppp!"

"Marvelous!"

"Stooooooopppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp!!"

I giggled and he fumed and I let all those synonyms sit with him as we passed the next few miles down the freeway in silence.

And then from the backseat, "Oh wow. This is awesome!"

You might think at this point that I would laugh indulgently and give in and let him have his awesomes, but you'd be thinking wrong. In fact you probably don't think that, because you are a writer too, so you understand that not only did I not give in, but I repeated the litany of very thoughtfully suggested alternatives to the pedestrian "awesome."

Because that's how we roll.