Chest eyes

We're reading The Giver in class, and there are a lot of words that my students are unfamiliar with. At one point, I stopped reading and asked the class, "Who can tell me what 'chastise' means?"

One student raised his hand and, dead serious, goes, "Well, it probably means eyes on your chest or something."

The class was like, "HUH?!" and I just stood there dumbfounded for a minute--and then I realized the miscommunication and just DIED.

"No, Brian," I said, wiping the tears from my eyes. "It's CHASTISE, not CHEST EYES."

So that explained the confused look on his face when he answered the question. LOLOL.

Later on at lunch, we were still laughing about it and I said, "I mean, seriously, Brian, that doesn't even make any SENSE. Have you ever heard of 'chest eyes' before?"

"Nope," he replied, "but I've never heard of 'chastise' before, either."

Touche.