Young naive folks are likely to do things which in retrospect are pretty stupid. I was a child once and I was naive too. So I did stupid things. It gets even stupider when said child is trying to say things in a language he does not master. There was an ethnic insult against Anglophones which was current in Québec when I was a kid: “square head.” (The Urban Dictionary states that the insult is always expressed in French but this is false.) I heard the insult without the benefit of knowing English or getting a full explanation as to what it meant. An untrained ear is treacherous. Soon I started calling the Anglos “squirrels.” You can imagine the surprise when someone addressing me in English would get the evil eye accompanied with the exclamation “DAMNED SQUIRREL!!!”
My Squirrel Phase
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