Air quotes and other signs of the time

The other day, someone in my little first grade class said something that was really kind of mean. I've been really working with them on not being so mean to each other, since it seems they can be just vicious! Example: One little girl has chickens and she talks about them all the time, one little boy likes to hunt, and is not above saying, "and when I'm out hunting, I just might shoot your chickens." Ouch...for real! Of course this puts them into what I'd call a "pissing match," where she tells him that she'll call the cops, and he says that he has a license to hunt, and she decides to "faint" dramatically, and cry hysterically until he apologizes. Seriously, Scarlett O'Hara has nothing on this little girl.

Anyway, someone said something mean. You know, like..."Yeah well you have bad breath." So I thought I'd try to step in and break things up before we got to fainting and crying. I said, oh...little girl, that was so "nice" (with air quotes, using my fingers) to say to her. This stopped everyone, because apparently they had no idea what the air quotes were for. Little boy said, "Why do you say that telling someone they have bad breath is nice?" Me: "Well, I said it like this....showing him "nice" with air quotes. Little boy said, "What is this (making air quotes).

At this point everyone was interested, so we had a little lesson in air quotes. I explained that if someone brings their dog over to your house, you have a lot of fun playing with the little dog, but then it goes home. Over dinner that night with your family, you talk about the dog, and your mom says, "You sure had fun playing with that "cute" (air quotes here) dog." But what she really mean is the dog is not cute at all, but you friend called it cute, so she's using the friend's words but expressing her opinion that the dog was not cute.

I thought this was a pretty good explanation and the kids seemed to understand. But the thing they just couldn't figure out was why air quotes are even necessary, because if mom thought the dog was ugly, why couldn't she just say ugly, without all the hand gestures. I told them that mom was using someone else's words that she didn't agree with, and when we use someone else's words we use quotes...or in this case air quotes.

Little girl in the front row said, "Yeah, well (air quotes here) that's really "smart." Yeah, I think they got it!