For the past five summers, I’ve worked in a camp’s “petting zoo” room. There are many reasons I love my job, but one of them is the hilarious and adorable things I hear from the kids, especially the youngest.

Most of our animals are secondhand from Craigslist or Facebook ads, and a lot of them are… less than “gently-used,” we’ll say. The lizards in particular often come missing bits.

This girl is about five years old.

Girl: “Why is the iguana missing her tail?”

Me: “It fell off when she was in her old home.”

Girl: “But how did it fall off?”

Me: “We don’t know. There was some sort of accident.”

Girl: *Confused whisper* “She… she maked in her pants?”

Me: “Not that kind of accident.”

My boss tells me that children saying they “need to make” is a Jewish-ism that came from Yiddish and not something gentiles say. So, for anyone who was confused, she was asking if the iguana had the potty sort of accident.

For the past five summers, I’ve worked in a camp’s “petting zoo” room. There are many reasons I love my job, but one of them is the hilarious and adorable things I hear from the kids, especially the youngest.

This boy is about five years old.

Boy: “Where does [Iguana] go at night?”

Me: “All of the animals stay here.”

Boy: “But what if they eat each other?”

Me: “They’re fine; they all stay in their own cages.”

Boy: “But how do you keep them safe?”

Me: “What do you think is here at night that could hurt them?”

He pauses for a beat.

Boy: “Ghosts! What if the ghosts get her?”

Me: “Uh… [Iguana] isn’t afraid of ghosts.”

Boy: “Is that because she’s a grownup?”

Me: *Pause* “Yes, that’s it.”

Boy: “Okay.” *Points at a turtle* “Is she afraid of ghosts?”

I am a Scottish woman, and I’m spending a university summer working as a counsellor at a very ethnically diverse summer camp aimed at low-income, inner-city teenage girls.

Me: “Come on, girls, everyone queue up for lunch.”

I notice a few surprised looks but don’t think anything of it. I continue calling groups of campers “girls” for the next few days, until I am called into a meeting with my boss and other senior staff members.

Boss: “I don’t know how to say this, but you have to stop calling the kids ‘ghettos’.”

Me: “Sorry, what?”

Boss: “This is serious. I don’t know why you think it’s acceptable, but it has to stop.”

Me: “I don’t call them ghettos. I call them girls.”

Boss: “Wait, what?”

It turns out that the rolled Scottish R is very similar to the soft D sound a lot of Americans make instead of a double T. So, my very Scottish accented “gehr-lls” sounded to an American ear a lot like “ghettos”. It took some persuading to convince the senior staff that I wasn’t being offensive; I was just Scottish!

I explained what happened to the teenagers, who found the misunderstanding hilarious, but I only called them “kids” or “ladies” for the rest of the summer.

We had a lady FLIP OUT because we run a summer camp in conjunction with the local YMCA.

Lady: “That’s a Christian organization! You can’t put up these signs in schools because of the separation of church and state! I will be contacting my lawyer!”

We never heard from a lawyer.

I’m working at a summer camp.

Second-Grader: “My dad watches adult movies in the living room after I go to bed.”

Some of the fourth- and fifth-graders start laughing.

Me: “What do you mean?”

Second-Grader: “He watches movies that I’m not allowed to watch because they say bad words and there’s too much fighting and guns.”

Me: “Let’s call them ‘grown-up movies,’ instead. ‘Adult movies’ means something really bad.”