Mr. Jam

We got Sethie a "Word Whammer" for his birthday, which is basically a high tech version of those little refrigerator letter magnets they had when I was a kid. I remember arranging those dinky little plastic letters into strings and then asking my mom what word I had made. She'd glance at the fridge and say, "That doesn't make a word." I was extremely frustrated by this. They fit the word-making algorithm I had studied from books! Consonant-vowel-consonant, etc.!

Well, now pre-readers needn't wonder! Put any three letter string into the "Word Whammer" and it will tell you if you made a word. It will also sound out the letters, even if you didn't manage to accomplish wordage (except where, as the manual says, "Certain letter combinations may be found to be offensive", so no danger of Junior learning any four-letter words with three-letter accidental misspellings). Where was this wizardry when I needed it?

Anyway, T. uses it a lot more than Sethie because he's learning this stuff in kindergarten now, but Sethie does like to line up the letters and he does know most of their names and sounds. But in general he spells "GXAHER", "PYEQWNAQ", and that sort of thing. I showed him yesterday that the magnets also stick to the dishwasher, then came back a little while later to find this:

I'm not saying it means something, but doesn't it feel like it should? Cue up the opening music for an Inspector Lynley mystery...

After Sethie saw me get out the camera to photograph his enigmatic creation, he immediately wanted in.