I was talking to my son on the phone yesterday afternoon while he was helping his four-year-old daughter with her "homework" from pre-kindergarten. She was to learn how to write the letters M, U, X, and Y. Her homework assignment apparently called for her to write the letters three or four times each, to give her the opportunity to practice writing them.

While Jim and I were talking, we decided that those letters would make a pretty cool-sounding word--MUXY (pronounced muk'si). While we were trying to decide what definition to assign to our new word, his daughter asked him to explain to her again what she was supposed to do on her homework assignment. He explained that she was to write all the letters three (or four) times each, and I heard her say, "Okay, but I'm going to do them one at a time."

I started laughing, because I could just see her looking up at her Daddy through her bangs, like he was just so silly for expecting her to do all that work all at once. I told Jim that we now had our definition for "muxy"--it is the look, body language, and attitude a four-year-old gives her silly Daddy when she is patiently explaining to him the proper way to do things.

Muxy. May we all have such.