Shia LaBoof

This story may seem a bit cruel, but you must understand that my mother is as innocent as a 3 year old, and it's very difficult not to mess with her head for kicks sometimes.

When I was younger, I idolized Louis Stevens from that Disney show Even Stevens. I wanted to be exactly like him. Louis was of course played by Shia LaBeouf, who was just a kid at the time.

When I was about 13, my mom and I were looking through Blockbuster when she found The Battle of Shaker Heights, that Project Greenlight movie. She excitedly picked it up and showed it to me.

"Look, Eric," she said, "it's Shia-"

She paused and focused intensely on his last name.

"La... beef? Boof? Eric, how do you pronounce this?" she asked, pointing at his name.

"It's pronounced buff. LaBuff," I said, trying very hard to show how completely uninterested I was in the movie.

A few minutes later, we picked out a couple of movies and left. At home, my mom kept pronouncing his name under her breath.

"It's La-Buff, right?"

Then Eric got an idea.

Eric got an awful idea.

Eric got a wonderful, awful idea!

Knowing full well that she was pronouncing it correctly, I responded with

"No, mom, it's La-Buff."

"That's what I'm saying, isn't it?"

"Nope. You're saying La-Boof."

She looked at me a little confused.

"Am I?"

"Yep."

"La-Buff."

"No mom, it's pronounced La-Buff!"

After a few minutes of doing this back and forth, I had her completely convinced that she was hearing something different than what she was actually saying.

"This is so strange! I've never heard of this happening. I mean I swear I'm saying it differently than your hearing it!" She began to look concerned.

"You mean in your 30 years working in the Intensive Care Unit, you never saw a case of this? I read about it on the internet a while ago, but I wasn't sure if it was real."

"Are you sure it's me and not you? Maybe you're the one hearing it wrong. I'm saying LaBuff, I swear! But you're hearing La Boof!"

"Oh my God," I said in a false state of panic, "You mean I have the hearing disorder?"

My mom began to look extremely worried.

"Well don't worry, honey," she said, "we can probably get you on medication for it or something."

That's when I decided I was done.

"No I can't," I said as I got up, "You were saying his name correctly the whole time, and I can hear just fine. I just didn't want to do my homework. Thanks for wasting some time."

I then got grounded from video games for a few days. In my opinion, though, it was totally worth it.