Holy Cannoli

Cannoli are Sicilian pastry desserts. In much of the U.S. or Canada, whether you have one or a dozen, you call it/them cannoli. No differential for singular or plural, which is great when one doesn’t wish to admit how many one has devoured. This is apparently not the case for other counties as many do not speak English and I speak no other language.

'Holy cannoli' happens to be one of my favorite sayings.

My husband can’t stand cannoli. Not the pastry, the word. It doesn’t conform to the ‘rules’ of grammar regarding singular and plural usage.

Roll the dice. Two or more. Roll just one and it’s a die. One little annoying rodent is a mouse. And there is never just one. They are always multiplying, but are not mouses. They become mice. Though they do rhyme with dice, just one (preferably dead) is not a mie.

One large feathery fowl is goose, but geese are two or more and a single fowl is the same as many fowl. Meese is not multiple moose. Moose is both singular and plural, as is/are deer and sheep. Deep is intensified to deeper or deepest while a fungus becomes fungal, fungi or funguses. Multiple visual orbs are eyes, but upon waking you are blurry-eyed. Audio stimulus becomes stimuli which you hear, your ear hears, or you heard, and has nothing whatsoever to do with moose herds. Or a herd. Oh dear. Or maybe deer.

Whooooaaaah! Did someone just call 'foul'? Or is that fouled? Maybe fouls. Or a multiple foul. Unless it smells. Then it is just foul, even if it involves various smells. Whatever: my hubby thinks it all stinks.

In the words of Mr. Jinks, "I hate those meeces to pieces!"

The blog Life with Aspergers has a great post "Aspergers and Rules" about this.

Rigidity. Resistance to change. Binding rule sets. Things that can all lead to confusion, conflict and even possible depression.

I especially enjoyed reading some of the comments on that blog post. My favorite was:

“Thanks for this. I was always impressed by my Aspie husband's "discipline" and after reading this I understand that it is just his strict adherence to the rules he has. Now, if only I can use these rules to make him do what I want... :) Cheers!”

Indeed, dear ‘Mish’.  Please let me know if you were successful.

Laugh out loud!