Lisa Carnley is managing editor of the Lampasas Dispatch Record. My grandson, Landon, is like a myna bird. He hears something, and he repeats it -- incessantly. He never forgets phrases or sayings of any kind, especially if his audience responds with a smile or a laugh for his efforts.

People (members of my family, mostly) enjoy telling him to say something just so they can hear it repeated from a 5-yearold’s mouth. And he always obliges -- usually coming out with the phrases at the oddest but sometimes most appropriate times.

His latest is a phrase my sister, Sharon, taught him: “Cry me a river.” He used that until I was tired of hearing it -- even when it didn’t make sense. But it was ingrained in his head, and “cry me a river” became the catchphrase of the weekend recently.

At a special event in Houston, my family members all stayed at a very nice hotel for several days. It was a popular place, as witnessed by the crowds that filled the glass-walled elevators at any given time of day or night.

I think a lot of people rode the elevator because they liked to gawk at those on the other side of the glass -- even though they didn’t have enough sense to know they were being gawked at, myself included.

One particularly warm, humid day (as if there were any other kind in Houston), we had ridden the elevator several times to breakfast and back upstairs again to get ready for the day.

We all crowded into the glass box on the way back down to the lobby. There were probably about 25 people in there; surely we were over the weight limit. Each time the elevator stopped to take on more passengers, we moved in closer until we were packed like sardines.

The usual grunting, groaning and shifting accompanied each floor stop. As the elevator made its way back down, one women remarked, “Wow, it sure is hot and crowded in here.”

And that small voice piped out from between the legs of the multitudes: “Cry me a river.”

A brief moment of silence ensued, and then the entire crowd burst into laughter. “Did he just say what I think he said?” asked one woman.

And my sister, ever proud of herself, said, “Yup. He sure did.”

Of course, my grandson was the hit of the elevator and the lobby as everyone talked about the little boy with the grown-up vocabulary. He was so proud of himself.

And when he got back home, his mother called me to be sure she understood Landon correctly when his little sister got a spanking, and he piped up with -- you guessed it -- “Cry me a river.”

After that, he was, well, crying a river. I believe that is the last time he repeated that particular phrase. It didn’t seem quite so funny to him anymore, but I’m not so sure he understood why.

I guess we need to be careful what we say around kids. What’s funny in one circumstance can have the opposite effect at other times.

Landon learned that lesson -- painfully.