When my daughter was 3 years old, she was always ready to do something or go somewhere on a moment’s notice:

“Mommy, let’s make cookies.” “We will after I finish folding the laundry. In the meantime, why don’t you pick up your toys and put them in the toy box?”

“Mommy, let’s go to the store and buy more Fruit Loops.” “First I have to finish doing the dishes. Then we’ll go. In the meantime please see if you can find your lost slipper.”

“Mommy, let’s take the baby for a walk to the park.” “We’ll go when she gets up from her nap. In the meantime, please brush your hair.”

“Mommy, why do I have to do everything in the mean time? Why can’t I do things in the nice time!”

— Carol Brinkman

Children are so alive to the possibilities of language. They see words and phrases and life itself in startlingly fresh ways. My friend Chester Ryeguild, a quadriplegic, tells of the time that a little girl saw him coming down the hallway in his wheelchair. “Look, Mommy,” she exclaimed. “There’s a man with round feet!”

Mother blushed crimson with embarrassment and tried to silence her daughter. But Chester was not at all offended. Rather, he was delighted by the girl’s metaphoric imagination.

When my son was 3, I had a small collection of breakable items arrayed on a table in the living room. My son had been taught (I hoped) not to play with them. One day, while sitting with my back to that table, I heard my son behind me. I asked, “Taylor, are you touching any of those items?”

He replied. “No, Mommy, I’m just looking at them with my fingers.”

— Priscilla Hall

A child looks at his grandmother’s varicose veins and wonders why “she has lightning in her legs.” Another child gazes at a crescent moon and observes, “The moon is just waking up.” Seeing the stars dancing across the night sky, a 2½-year-old says, more wisely than she can know, “Look, Mommy, that’s God’s big dot-to-dot.”

As I was making a sandwich, my then 7-year-old old grandson wandered into the kitchen and said, “What are you making, Grandma?”

I replied “a liverwurst sandwich.” With a look of utter distaste and sorrowfulness, he responded, “It was already liver. Did they have to make it worst?”

— Shirley Bodie

Like Shirley Bodie’s grandson, children can be delightfully literal about the meanings of word parts. A first-grader explains that because her school principal is female, she’s really “a princessipal.” A 6-year-old jumps up on the kitchen sink and exclaims, “Look, Mommy and Daddy. I’m sink-ing!”

My son Henry has been precocious since the womb; but as his language skills are evolving, he has been sending husband and me into hysterics with his gift for malapropisms. Here are a few of his gems:

His older sister is named Sarah. Around a year ago he dubbed her “Sour.” She won’t let us correct him. He calls hard-boiled eggs “horrible eggs.” He calls string cheese “strange cheese.” He calls sunscreen “sum scream.” He has the uncanny gift of enhancing the subject with these new names. We are so enjoying him.

— Eve Selis

Small children sometimes call a tongue depressor an “ah-stick” and a sliding board a “whee-down.” The poet Carl Sandburg quotes a little boy who had just pulled up a large weed from the soil. When his mother said, “My, you were strong to get that out!” the boy answered, “I sure was. The whole earth had hold of it!”

I’m pleased to report that I have already received more than 150 messages responding and contributing to this column. Quite apparently, you readers have not lost your childlike, fresh-eyed, fresh-eared love of and abiding curiosity about language.

Keep sharing, please.

Please send your questions and comments about language to richard.lederer@utsandiego.com verbivore.com