Malapropisms - accidently saying what you meant!

My son has had a rash of saying what he means, and not even noticing. I start laughing, and he looks at me like I have an unsightly tumor. He replays it in his head, and he still doesn't get it. Then he replays it very slowly, and laughs uncontrollably.

I wrote 2 of them down.

It frustrates me to no avail [should be, "to no end."]
He was talking about his english class, which is currently wasting time on things that will be of no help to him in life. He would like to get things back on track.


I don't think getting grades would have made much of a difference, to be quite ominous. [should be, "to be quite honest."]
At the end of a long, shocking conversation in which my kids disabused me of any notions that they had been dutiful students.

My daughter freaked me out by telling how very consistently she put her homework off until the last minute, then pulled an all nighter to get in turned in on time. My son let me know that he made the ultimate sacrifice of taking late assignment penalties, rather than sacrifice his health. Yes, I was supposed to be impressed. :-)

Anyway, he explained to me that he really didn't see why they handed out grades at all. With a MORE THAN straight face, he explained to me that it would not have made any difference in his degree of attention to his schoolwork. He really thought he had said, "to be quite honest." My daughter and I both had to quit laughing long enough to correct him before he would even believe us.

Too rich.