I Hope I Growed Out of that Stage

“I drinked it, Dad!”

At three years old, my son can carry on a decent conversation, but he abuses the English language mercilessly. Oddly enough, he does it because he’s following the rules.

Without me teaching it, his brain has already decoded the basic rules of verbs. Just add “-ed” and you get past tense:

Drop – Dropped
Bump – Bumped
Walk – Walked

Of course, the rule only goes so far:

Draw – Drew
Give – Gave
Go – Went

There are countless irregular verbs that the poor boy will have to stumble through till he figures out that rules are meant to be broken.

Toddlers, bureaucrats, and religious legalists. They’re all just babies clinging to the few rules they know.

Some will grow enough to realize that there are exceptions to the rules. Some will eventually see that many rules are simply general guidelines meant to help us. A very few will mature enough leave the rules behind and live by wisdom, love, and grace.