My Teenage Son Defining Words Just Before I Challenge His Use of Possessive Pronouns

By Jan Kaneen

It’s not been ‘left,’ it’s deliberate. There’s no point in ‘making’ something you’re going to unmake the minute you use it. And you can’t ‘stain’ black sheets. Black’s an absence of colour. You can’t ‘stain’ something that’s not there. And ‘caked-on’s’ downright melodramatic. It’s just a bit spattered that’s all – dried-on at most. And mould’s the opposite of ‘filth’ actually, specially on bread. In the olden-days, they used to make it into moultices or poultices or something, to treat infection. And anyway, Mother, you shouldn’t even be in my bedroom, it’s my space, my mould, my ‘mess,’ not yours.