Most kids use their first words to name things. They point at objects, hear the names over and over again and eventually the words get burned into their brains. My older son Max used single-syllable noises ("duh" for duck, "buh" for bird, "cuh" for car, etc.) and then branched out from there. One friend of his spoke only in adjectives. He named objects based on what they did. Wheels, fans, etc., were all "round and rounds." A very creative boy.

My younger son Sam speaks in interjections. The words he uses every day are: "boo," "wow," "whoa," "woo" (this without having seen Ric Flair celebrating a goal at a Carolina Hurricanes game) and "uh-oh." In the interests of full disclosure, he also uses "outside," "up" and "down" may times a day. Still, he relies on the interjection as his favored part of speech.

As any Schoolhouse Rock fan will tell you, interjections show excitement or emotion. Sam happens to be the younger brother of a decidedly vociferous boy, and I'm guessing that he feels he needs to work extra hard to get his point across. He's probably right.

Even more to the point, though, Sam's interjection favoritism also points out a crucial part of his personality. Sam prefers to experience things and think about them later (if at all). This is why when he's up at the top of a tall slide, he's just as likely to figure out a way to jump off the side of the platform as he is to go down the slide. He's fallen from heights of six-to-eight feet a few times--without any apparent injury other than knocking the wind out of him--and only just now might he be starting to realize that such feats aren't necessarily a good idea.

Max's fixation with nouns (and what they really mean) fits his personality. He treads lightly into new situations, but once he's processed his surroundings (often verbally as well as internally) he's ready to go. When he gets worried or confused, Max falls back on words. Words are his friends, and they will always help him. At least, he seems to think they will.

Sam has no such illusions about words. In his world, it is much better to crack someone on the head with a 10-quart stock pot than it is to try and "talk it out." Of course, until now he really couldn't talk. And his current vocabulary doesn't really support much of a conversation. So maybe his apparent view that actions really do speak louder than words will soften in the future.

And maybe we'll have to spend years convincing him that whacking someone (or something) that displeases you is a bad idea. I don't know, and I'm not one to speculate. I don't engage in "what do you think they'll be when they grow up?" musings, mostly because they don't interest me. I want to know what I'm going to be when I grow up. Max and Sam are gonna have to figure themselves out on their own. In any case, I hope that the natural maturation processes chills Sam out a bit.

Nonetheless, there are benefits to the visceral enjoyment of life. As a beer freak, I drink beer most days. From the age when each has been able to dip a finger into my beer without tipping over the glass, Max and Sam have tasted my beer. Max will look at the beer, taste it and then offer a guess as to what type it is. He's right as often as not. And even before he could talk, Max seemed to be analyzing the taste rather than simply enjoying it. He wanted to be able to explain why he enjoyed it, even if he couldn't express that to us at the time. Sam, on the other hand, simply goes into spasms of joy when he tastes beer. He seems to prefer maltier beers, but as I refuse to serve bad (or simply boring) beer in my house, his reaction to any beer is about the same: rapturous joy.

Indeed, when Sam is happy, the whole world is happy with him. When Sam is sad or angry, dark clouds fill the air around him. Sam is, in many ways, a walking interjection. And his fledgling vocabulary reflects this.

I don't know if anyone has done a study on parts of speech and personality, but my guess is there's something there. We all talk, and each of us talks in a distinct way. All of us use words in ways they're not intended to be used. Those deviations from the norm say a lot about who we are. Why should it be any different for kids who are just learning how to speak?

Jon Worley is an oldest child. His first word was "light." A noun.