Give Me a Home, Where the Buffali Roam

Andy's dad loves a good joke. He also used to love to mess with Andy when he was a kid. He would tell Andy things as though they were fact, while lying through his teeth. This got my husband into trouble on more than one occassion.

One of these times, I like to refer to as the Myth of the Buffali. See, Mr. B (Andy's pop) somehow convinced Andy that the plural for buffalo was buffali. It took a bit of persuasion, but pretty soon, the idea set in. (Apparently Mrs. B had no idea what her husband was up to, cause I can't imagine her letting Andy go very long thinking this was fact.)

Anyway, the next day, Andrew got to school and started telling his friends about what he had learned. At first, the others didn't fall for this nonsense, but Andy is an incredible salesman. He managed to sway their thinking in his direction and before long had his classmates agreeing that the plural of buffalo must be buffali. Then, he went to the next class and started the process again. Only this time, a teacher must have overheard him and corrected his grammer. Andrew, being the rebel he is, argued back with her for a little while, but finally realized what his dad had done. Of course, he felt dumb, but mostly he was embarassed. By the end of the day, all his classmates knew what he had been saying and were giving him a hard time about it.

He hasn't trusted his dad since then. At least not without input from a different source.

I dredge up this story from time to time, to remind Andy that he CAN be wrong. (which isn't often in his mind) I like to ask him what happened to the mythical buffali. Did they die off? Are they in hiding with Elvis in Canada?