I once worked with a British engineer. He created tables of terms that I had to verify. I asked him to alphabetize the tables to make my job easier. He looked at me blankly for several seconds so I finally said, “Alphabetize, put in alphabetical order.” He said, “That’s not a word!” Me: “Yes it is. Look it up.” He pulls out this huge hardbound Oxford dictionary of English, looks it up and pronounced it not a word. I ask, “Is that a British dictionary?” Yes. “Well, look it up in an American dictionary.” So he pulls out a small paperback dictionary. I’m thinking, please be in there, please be in there…. He puts the dictionary back. “It’s not a word, it’s an Americanism.”
Mom was ALWAYS home when I got home from school. Except once. I went through the entire house looking for her. By the time I was in the bedrooms, I was totally panicked and totally expecting to find her murdered, dead on the floor somewhere. Then I heard her come in the back door. She had been next-door talking to a neighbor and got back a few minutes late. It took a while to calm me down and after that she was ALWAYS home we kids got home from school!
Read this for a book club & highly recommend it: The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery