The Shemeiermo mystery

It's Friday night and I'm downstairs playing with Elijah. Miriam is upstairs happily splashing in the bathtub. I hear her start to sing a curious song. To the tune of "Oh Christmas Tree", I hear her singing, "Shemeiermo, Shemeirmo" (pronounced shuh-may-er-moe). I go up and ask her what Shemeiermo is supposed to mean. "That's the name of Bree's friend!" she happily tells me. I am skeptical of there being any child namedShemeiermo, but Miriam is usually surprisingly right when she says things like this. Miriam insists that Shemeiermo is a girl that goes to our church who is a friend of our neighbor Bree.

Fastforward to Sunday morning at church. Several times over the last few days Miriam has talked about the mystery friend Shemeiermo, and Jeff and I are burning with curiousity to find out who she might be. As Sunday School is ending, we ask her if she sees Shemeiermo, and she points to a girl halfway down the hallway. "That's Shemeiermo!" she exclaims. So Jeff and I practically run down the hallway after this little girl and Jeff stops her mom. "Is that your daughter?" he asks. When she nods, he says, "What is her name?" "Mikayla" the mom answers, a little confused. "Oh!" says Jeff, "Well for so

me reason my daughter thought her name was Shemeiermo!" Now the mom looks very confused and possibly slightly offended (which would be a not-unreasonable response to have).

We laugh as we return to Miriam and I spy Angie, Bree's mom standing there. I ask her if Bree has any friend named something resembling Shemeiermo, and Angie also laughs and says no. I figure Miriam must have made it all up after all.

That evening, we have Bree's family and the other American family in our neighborhood over to dinner. Angie and I are laughing about the Shemeiermo story, when Leah realizes that she knows about Shemeiermo. Her son Austin goes to the same preschool as Bree. At their school there is a little girl who likes to make up words with Austin, and their newest funny word is Shemeiermo. So apparently Bree liked to repeat it too and Miriam thought it was a person's name. We all had a good laugh together and I was relieved to finally solve the mystery!

This is apparently the only picture I have of Miriam and Bree. She's gonna love me one day for putting this online.