"Miss Sherry, Miss Margaret and I have been sitting here talking and we want to ask you a question," she said.

Now, this should have been my cue to feign a bad connection and hang up, refusing to answer the phone again until enough time had passed that she had forgotten why she called in the first place.

There was no way this conversation was going to end well. These three women had gotten into a disagreement of some kind and they expected me to be Judge Wapner and mediate their argument.

"Sorry, you're breaking up. I'll have to call you back," I should have said.

But sometimes, I ain't that bright.

"OK, ask away," I actually said.

"Have you ever heard of onomatopoeia?" she asked.

Was this a trick question, I wondered. Of course, I have heard of onomatopoeia. I was an English major, after all. Onomatopoeia is when you form a word by imitating the sound that word describes. Like boom or hiccup or smack or hiss.

But it was one of those questions I wasn't sure how I was supposed to answer. It's like when I'm at the grocery store and someone asks, "Aren't you Mitch Clarke?"

If it seems like the person is about to compliment me on one of my columns or about something we ran in the newspaper, the correct answer is, "Why, of course I am."

Unfortunately, as hard as it is to believe, not everyone wants to compliment the newspaper. Some people want to complain about how we covered a story or that their paper was wet. Sometimes they want to holler at me, no matter that we're both standing in the produce section.

When those people ask if I'm Mitch Clarke, the answer is usually, "Are you kidding me? I'm better looking than that jerk." And I walk away. Quickly.

But I was already neck deep in this conversation with my mother, so I conceded that, yes, I had heard of onomatopoeia.

It turns out Miss Sherry, an elementary school teacher, had heard one of her students say the word, and the women were trying to figure out if it was really a word and exactly what it meant. Because it's a difficult word to spell, they were having problems finding it in the dictionary.

I was a little surprised that my mother didn't know onomatopoeia. She's a bright woman. She does the crossword puzzle in ink.

It's not really surprising that I ended up as a writer. I come from a long line of word people who enjoy crossword puzzles and other word games.

My great-grandmother and great-grandfather used to work the Jumble together every morning. But they had a unique way of doing it. He would sit at the kitchen table while she cooked breakfast. He would call out the letters, and after just a few seconds of thought, she'd tell him the answer.

"C-A-L-A-P-E," he'd call out.

"Palace," she'd respond.

Of course not everyone in the family is a word person. My brother, Marvin, is a science person. He studied biology in college, worked in a lab making chicken vaccines for many years and now teaches high school physics.

Personally, I don't know Newton's Laws from Murphy's Laws. But that's OK. I can make subjects and verbs agree better than him.

I don't know where he got the science gene. Maybe he's adopted.

Anyway, my mother has learned something new, and that's a good thing. You're never too old to learn, and I was happy to be able to help her pick up a new concept.

Next week, maybe I'll tell her about alliteration.

Mitch Clarke is executive editor of The Times. His column appears Sundays in The Times. Read previous column on gainesvilletimes.com. Originally published Feb. 15, 2009.