Friday, October 31, 2008

He heard it from me

Today I taught my son the s-word. Here's how it went.
J: Mom, what's the s-word?
A: There's lots of words that start with S...sunshine...super. (Ever so casually) In what context did you hear that?
J: Well Charlie said that his little sister said the s-word and he didn't even tell me what the s-word is!
A: Oh well, in that case he was just saying the first letter because the word is impolite in itself. I think he was referring to 'Shit' which is a rude word people use sometimes.
J: Oh. Well, what does 'Schut' mean anyway? (Isn't that cute he's so unfamiliar that he mispronounces it with a German accent and everything?)
A: I think it means poop.
J: Oh.

So, that's the day I taught my son a curse word. For a moment I thought "I guess it's best that he hear it from me." But then that sounded wrong. It would be best to hear it from some bad older kid who shows us all the examples of ways NOT to behave. There are some things my kids are missing out on by not being in school with a large group of peers for 40 hours a week. Maybe I should start organizing playdates with more bad kids...pretty soon we'll be doing a lesson on how to make spitballs. What would it be like to grow up without knowing that, if you throw a wad of wet TP on the ceiling it will stick there? I guess we'll see.

4 comments:

la said...

bring your kids on a field trip to my school! that would teach them! we have "bad" kids galore!!!

Pat said...

I can cross my eyes. And I used to be able to turn my eyelids inside out. And, eek, I used to smoke...but let's just not go there!

Dim Sum, Bagels, and Crawfish said...

Let me know how the bad kid playdate works out...we're dealing with serious gun obsession and I am considering some kind of de-sensitization experience along the same lines.

And hey...how can you post on Halloween without any costume pics? Your kids always have the best outfits.

Marjorie said...

I told you my story, right? I'm driving the car some weekday, the kids in back, my mom in front. Gabrielle says "f*ck" and laughs. My mom looks at me and says "at least you know she's not picking it up at school."

The kids call all bad words "Mommy words" and will debate whether a particular word rises to the level of a Mommy Word as well as including plenty of perfectly acceptable words like 'idiot.'