Anyone who has a sibling will know what I’m talking about here. Have your parents (or anyone else, for that matter) ever call you the wrong name? Between PD and I, we’ve been called the other’s name, the names of our beloved cats and our aunts. It’s a part of life for siblings. Teachers do this, too. They’ll call you by your brother/sister’s name and then when they’re corrected they’ll say “Sorry, it’s just that I taught them”.

Also, have you ever (I’ve definitely had it; don’t know about PD) had the unfortunate experience of calling your teacher “Mum”? God, it’s excruciating for anyone who does this as the rest of the class burst out laughing and the teacher tends to give a small smile.

Then there’s when you’re thinking two different phrases at the same time, so your words come out wrong. For instance, the other day, someone asked me how my day was going. I was thinking both that it was good and that it was nice, so I ended up saying “It was gice, uh, nice”. Then there was that one time when I was in RE and I was talking about “ticks in the D column” and instead of ticks, I accidently said something inappropriate, to which the girls I was talking to laughed. I did correct myself, but of all the word confusions you could have in a religion class, that was not one of the best. I just hope my teacher didn’t hear me that time.

Boy, words can be torture.