Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Daddy's Occupation

When I was a little girl, I never seemed to know how to explain what my father did for a living. He is an information systems professor, although at the time, I only knew a couple of catch phrases like "databases" and "computers" and "business". I think it's also a pretty good excuse that in the 80s, information systems were not as commonly known of as they are now. To illustrate: my dad has never taken a course in computers or in business, but has a PhD in mathematics and experience in the business world working with developing information systems.

That's background for the conversation Katrina and I had last night. We were reading the book Meet My Grandmother, She's a Supreme Court Justice, and Katrina started talking about her dad (Mark), who has "an insulting job for Deloitte."

"A what?"

"A...a Deloitte job."

"What does Daddy do at his job?"

"He goes to people's houses and tells them how to be better."

So Katrina's concept of Mark's job is that by insulting people, he inspires them to change. Well at least she got the -sulting job for Deloitte part right. And "con" does seem like it would worsen the meaning as a prefix.

8 comments:

Kent said...

How great would that job be? I would love to be paid to go over to people's houses and insult them. "Your walls are a hideous green!" "Your lawn is patchy!" "Your kids are ugly!" Here's my fee...have a great day!

Bennett family said...

Your family is beautiful! Such cute kids! It's fun to read your blog and get to know you again.

Liesl said...

I was greatly amused by that. I mentioned it to some fellow students in my Career Exploration class and they all thought it would be a great job to go insult people and get paid for it. Why doesn't it exist?

runningmom said...

LOL!!!

Melanie said...

Sometimes kids just know more than we think they do...it's like when kids say their parents are "liars" when they're lawyers...Maybe Katrina has witnessed Mark in full "insulting" mode and thought he was good at it enough to make money off it.

Haymonds said...

That's awesome. I remember when my teacher in 3rd grade asked me what my dad did for work, and I said "He sells drugs." (he was still a pharm rep at the time) Funny how we may know something to say but it may not be spot on......

The Eberhardts said...

i am laughing so hard! life as an in-sultant, too great!

Alexis said...

This is priceless- thanks for sharing.