My daughter Tana saw a wind-up critter that she wanted for Christmas. To me, it looked like a ferret, but the box said, ‘weasel.’ Tom (my husband) thought it just looked like a tail with a ball on the end of it.

Later, when Tom was going out, I whispered for him to get the critter for a stocking-stuffer. Imagine the fit I took when he came back with a goofy toucan instead. I asked, “What made you get that goofy toucan?”

“Because,” he explained, “the sales lady didn’t have a parrot.”

“Why would you get a parrot if she had one? You were supposed to get a weasel!”

“You never said ‘weasel,’” he argued.  “You told me to get a parrot.”

I continued complaining and finally said, “I can’t understand why you’d drag home that goofy toucan when Tana wanted that stupid tail that looked like a ferret.”

Wait. Ferret. Parrot. The problem became clear.

The next day, Tom went back to the store, and this is what he said to the sales lady:  “I’m returning this toucan because my wife told me to get a ‘ferret,’ but I thought she said ‘parrot,’ and she had a fit when I came home with this goofy toucan instead of a weasel. All I really want is a tail with a ball on the end of it.”

During the stunned silence that gripped the store, Tom glanced around to see that not only the sales lady but also all of the other customers were staring at him with glazed eyes and dropped jaws.

Finally, Tom came home with the weasel, or ferret, or whatever it was. But, by then, Tana had decided she’d rather have the weird gorilla thing.