Five minute Fridays - Small

It's Friday again, and I'm wilting in humidity. But, with the kids downstairs with a movie and my husband out renting us a steam cleaner, I can't say that I don't have five minutes to spare. So here it is: the labour of five (mostly) clear-headed minutes, trying to write my best despite myself. Feel free to join the movement over at Lisa-Jo Baker's site, or at least see what your fellow writers have done with their five minutes today. It's lovely to see. This week's prompt: small.

I've written before about my daughter's love of big words. It's darlingly precocious, but it doesn't tell the whole story. The problem is understanding and communication doesn't lie in the use of complex vocabulary, but in the misuse of small words. Big words tend to be precise, accurate, and one dimensional. Small words, however, have an infinite variety of nuance and meaning. "Esophagus" is a lot easier to define than "fair", "mean", or "hurry". And yet, we're expected to start with these "simple" concepts. Easy to spell, easy to say, but oh so difficult to pin down. Perhaps that's why she's picked up on her parents' love of the big and varied. I'm sure it's only a matter of time before her brother follows suit.