Profanity- The Children Learn New Words

My father says that no one could swear as well or as colorfully as my grandfather. Years in the carnival business, as a soldier and a streetwise kid in Chicago gave him quite the vocabulary. Mind you, I can’t remember hearing my grandfather swear in front of me until I was a teenager.
He had great command of the language and didn’t curse unless there was a purpose.

But when he did engage the more colorful side of his oratory skills it was fun to listen to. He could go on for a solid half hour and never repeat himself. This is one area that I can’t compete with him. I have my share of expressions that I use and I like to think that I use them well.

I’d like to say that my children have never heard me utter a foul word, but the rules of the blog forbid lying. So I will readily confess to upon occasion having exposed them to a few words that I’d rather they not use. Until recently I could count on three fingers the number of times they had used any sort of profanity.

Yesterday things changed. As I was getting onto the freeway I found myself stuck behind a driver who refused to drive faster than 30 MPH. She is an accident waiting to happen and it was only dumb luck that prevented us from being struck by other drivers on the fabulous 405.

Needless to say as we rode behind this woman not only did I apply my horn I used a number of different words such as %&$#^&%, $$^&$^%^&# and %&## to express my displeasure.

Once we were safely ensconced in our lane I apologized to the children and explained that I had made a mistake in using those words. My son surprised me by agreeing with me.

“Dad, you did make a mistake. You should have said something else.”

“Oh?” “What do you think I should have said?”

And then from the seat behind my own I heard a soft voice say “you should have said suck my dick.”

After I picked my jaw up from the steering wheel I asked him to tell me where he had learned that particular expression.

“John’s older brother taught us.”

John is the 15 year-old older sibling of one of my son’s good friends. I may swear upon the odd occasion, but I have never used that expression in front of the children.

So I told my son that this wasn’t something that I wanted him to say and then I asked him if he understood what it meant. When he told me that he didn’t understand I breathed a sigh of relief and then pondered how to respond.

I didn’t really want to explain what it meant. He is still young enough that he doesn’t really need to know this, but at the same time I did say that he shouldn’t use words/expressions without knowing what it means.

I’ll have to share that part of the conversation with you all later.

• Saved: Children