You Said It Wrong, Son

(Granted, southern people tend to blur words together or pronounce them differently, but this one takes the cake. It is busy at this time at the library; we have just finished our story hour we have every week for preschoolers, so there’s a ton of people at the desk waiting to be checked out. A grandmother comes up to my desk to check out books for her grandson.)

Grandmother: *sweetly* “Do I have anything else out?”

Me: “Just one called The Son, by Philipp Meyer.”

Grandmother: *suddenly irate* “I’ve never checked that out!”

(I go through the spiel about her double-checking at home to make sure she really doesn’t have it there, and I offer to check upstairs on the bookshelf for it and call her later since we are so busy.)

Grandmother: “Go check. Now.”

(I am irritated because there are lines of people and she’s being so rude, but I know she probably left it at home. Most patrons who claim to have never checked out a particular book really do have it somewhere. While upstairs, I overhear a coworker ask her if she is being helped. She says yes in a snippy tone, pointing upstairs to me, but asks my coworker for the name of the book again.)

Coworker: “It’s The Son, by Philipp Meyer.”

Grandmother: “How’s it spelled?”

Coworker: “M-e-y-“

Grandmother: “No, the title.”

Coworker: “S-o-n.”

Grandmother: “Oh! I thought she meant The Sun, kinda like the one in the sky. Oh, yeah, I still have that at home by the bed.”

(With that, she left. I wondered how different I said “son” from “sun,” seeing as we’re both from the same Deep South town.)