I have this habit of occasionally teasing my kids, particularly my two older daughters, of not being graceful. (Sometimes in the appropriate moment, some of my students get it too.) When one of them trips or drops something or does something really klutzy, I will say with a smile something along the lines of: “Good thing we didn’t name you Grace,” or “Your a picture of grace,” or “I didn’t know your middle name was Grace?”
Well, my two daughters reminded me today of a story about child #2 when she was in fourth grade. One of her spelling words for a particular week was “graceful.” She spelled the word correctly, but misused it in a sentence—“Dad was graceful when he fell down.”
So much for irony…