Paging Frank

This is a conversation I had with my 5-year-old the other day:

5: [describing her day at school] “….and then I had fun with my friends at recess. I am Frank.”

Me: “What? You are Frank? Who is Frank?”

5: “No. I am Frank.”

Me: “What? I don’t get it. Oh – are you acting? Are you pretending to be someone named Frank?”

5: [visibly bothered] “NO! I am FRANK!”

Me: ….. [cautiously aware that Frank seems very bothered at this point and I am not sure what the hell is happening] ….”I’m sorry, I don’t understand. Can you use other words to help explain who Frank is?”

5: [about to burst into flames of frustration] “I. AM. FRANK.”

Me: …….

5: Grumble grumble grumble

Me: …..”Oooh wait. Do you mean you are ‘being frank’? Did you hear someone use that expression?”

5: “Yes.”

Me: “Do you know what that means?”

5: “No.”

I then launched into a 20-minute explanation that Frank is a name – she doesn’t know anyone named Frank and had no idea – after which point I tried to explain that, however, Frank is not a name in this scenario – hello, confusion – and then I tried to give her examples of how and why people would ever say they are ‘being frank.’ I’m pretty sure I lost her about 5 minutes in. I’m also pretty sure she’ll never want to be frank again. Or Frank.

4 thoughts on “Paging Frank

  1. If helpful, next time my parents are in time, I could introduce her to my dad, Frank. Though, to be frank, it’s a nickname for Francis which he doesn’t care for, so I don’t know if that would further add to the confusion…

Talk to me, Goose

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s