Teaching Headaches

Home schooling has been an awesome experience for my family, but recently one of my students has become very oppositional. This student has a very strong will and would get an 'A' on the debate team (if we had one.) The word, "why" is a favorite with this student and the statement, "I've decided that" usually follows after I've attempted to explain a lesson. It's always been a challenge for me to understand the views of this student, but today I was looking over tomorrow's lesson and now I too am beginning to wonder. Okay, where do I start?

There is no egg in eggplant, no ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins were not invented in England nor French fries in France. Sweetmeats are candies, while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat.
We find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square, and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig. And why is it that writers write and farmers farm, but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth, beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese?
You can make amends but, not one amend? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it? If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? How is it that people recite a play and play at a recital; ship by truck and send cargo by ship; have noses that run and feet that smell? Why drive on a parkway and park on a driveway?
How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites? Your house can burn up as it burns down; you fill in a form by filling it out and an alarm goes off by going on. When the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible. Why doesn't "Buick" rhyme with "quick?" How can a vote be invalid and a person in a wheelchair be the same?

So maybe my student isn't so oppositional, maybe he or she is a genius. And maybe I'm nuts for thinking that home schooling was a breeze.