For those of you of a certain age, you probably remember learning about interjections from watching ‘School House Rock’ on Saturday mornings when you were growing up.
Oh! Some of you don’t know what an interjection is? Let me help you—according to dictionary.com, an interjection is
the utterance of a word or phrase expressive of emotion; the uttering of an exclamation.
Yes! Yeah! Rats! Oops! Yuck!
After teaching about interjections in class this past week, one of my participants asked if she could share a story that she had just heard. Of course, I wanted to hear it, as I was curious about how it connected to what I had just taught.
She told us that there was an orchestra concert last Sunday in Boston. Just as the final notes of Mozart’s, “Masonic Funeral Music” echoed throughout the quiet hall, a young child’s voice split through the silence, exclaiming, “Wow!”
The audience giggled and then burst into wild applause. In the days following the concert, the orchestra made an effort to find the boy. They wanted to give him a recording of the concert, and to give him the opportunity to meet the conductor.
The story was reported on the news, and the boy was quickly identified. Much to everyone’s surprise, they found out that he is on the autistic spectrum, and is primarily non-verbal. His grandfather was quoted as saying, “I can count on one hand the number of times that [he’s] spontaneously ever come out with some expression of how he’s feeling.”
His reaction to the song touched everyone who witnessed it. It was a simple interjection, that meant so much!