Life Period

At our town pool, the lifeguards blow their whistles at the quarter of every hour to announce a fifteen minute rest period.  Anyone under the age of eighteen is required to get out of the pool, and the only open area of the pool is the lap lanes, in which adults can swim in peace without kids screaming and splashing around them.  At the start of every hour, rest period is announced over and the masses can once again enter the pool.  Julia and Madeleine generally spend rest period eating snack or digging in the sand, so I can understand the idea that it doesn't specifically feel like a "rest" to them.  It's more like "snack period," or "sand period."  However, Julia decided to stray from those more obvious nicknames and spent the first week of the summer referring to our time out of the pool as "life period."  Why?  "Because, Mama... I keep getting mixed up and calling it 'LIFE period,' because it's the time when the LIFEGUARDS get to go and swim if they want."

At any rate, it took about a week for Julia to wrap her head around "rest period," so any time we'd be digging, having a snack, visiting the bathrooms, etc, Julia would inevitably ask me something like, "Mom, is it almost time for LIFE PERIOD to be over?"

When I mentioned this to Ethan, he deadpanned to Julia, "So, if it's life period when you're out of the pool, does that mean when you're swimming, it's death period?"

"YEAH!  DEATH PERIOD!" Julia agreed enthusiastically.  Great.  Like most of Ethan's jokes with the girls, this one persisted and was not forgotten, so every time the lifeguards would announce it was time to get back in the water, Julia would joyfully exclaim, "It's DEATH PERIOD!"

A few days ago, while the girls and I were at free swim, we all visited the ladies room during rest period.  On our walk back down to the pool, I informed them that it was already 4:58, so the pool would be opening back up in two minutes.  "You mean, it's two minutes til DEATH PERIOD?" Julia asked me goofily.  She then inquired, "Mama?  Do you KNOW why me and Daddy call it DEATH PERIOD?"

Um... wasn't I there when the whole death period thing started?!?

"Yeah, remember how I told Daddy you kept calling rest period 'life period?'  So Daddy said if rest period is 'life period,' then when we go back in the pool, it must be 'death period."

"No, no, no, Mama!" she corrected me fondly, amused by my complete and utter lack of comprehension.  "We call it DEATH PERIOD because remember how when you were swimming one day and you went underwater, you got all that water in your ear and you were DEAF?"

So, it turns out that all along what Julia was actually saying was "Deaf Period." 
All in celebration of my temporary hearing loss in my right ear after a severe case of swimmer's ear. 

I'm really not sure which is worse.