The Council has reached a verdict on Brendan's Favorite Phrase

Ian takes very seriously the things that his classmate, Brendan, says and does, although he sometimes disapproves of the lad. They seem to be friends, and I met Brendan, and he's a delightful lad, but sometimes Ian isn't sure that he's on the right track. One time, following up on something Brendan told him, Ian asked him what his religion was, and, as Ian reported back to me, Brendan's religion is Irish. Where I grew up [Boston, the Irish mecca], "Irish" basically is a religion, or perhaps the religion.

In any case, Ian wanted to check on the permissibility of Brendan's trademark exclamation, in situations of surprise or disbelief. Ian is extremely cautious with language. We all are (my father was an English teacher), and we don't "cuss" in our house, but Ian is all the more perspicacious because of his heart-warmingly devout impulses. He certainly doesn't want to say anything bad, especially if it might somehow tie back to the metaphysical realm. So he walked me through this vetting process:

Ian told me that when Brendan waxes passionate, he says something - but it was something he wanted to write down, obviously so as to avoid uttering, in case the term should turn out to be an execration:

"Daddy, I'm gonna write down what he says when he gets that kind of excited."

He then took me to the easel-board in the play-room and wrote down:

"What the wold?" and asked, "Is that okay?"

I read once that, at the height of the glory-days soon after the Iranian revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini (or more correctly, "Imam Khomeini"), would handle a constant stream of queries as to whether certain practices, endeavors, etc. were Islamic or unislamic. [Chess, for example, turned out to be unislamic. Too bad those benighted Persians were the ones to invent it...]

Tonight's consultation had a similar feel to it, but I was happy to announce that "What in the world," alternately known as "What the wold" is fully McKosher. So much is forbidden, there's a particular satisfaction in formally permitting something, even something as borderline as "What the wold."

(March 3, 2011)