InNocent!

"I'm In-NO-sent!" cries big sister. She said it just like that. InNOsent.

The first time she said it, we were studying history and talking about religious persecution. She had read somewhere that Jesus was innocent of the crimes alleged by the Romans, but was crucified anyway. Ah, ha! Innocent is what she meant to say. But she learned the word from reading it and pronounced it the way it looked to her. InNOsent. After she went on and on about how so many people were accused of things and persecuted for their beliefs, even if they were inNOsent, I finally had to break it to her that it was pronounced "innusent." I hate to offer a correction when she is doing such good thinking about big concepts, but she said the word so many times that I worried she would ask later why I never mentioned it.

Apparently she doesn't mind saying it the way she read it because she continues to claim her inNOcence, apparently feeling an affinity for the persecuted.