Today, Parenting, Illustrated with Crappy Pictures blogged about accidentally teaching a curse word to her youngest. At the close of the post she asked, “Do you have a swearing story?”
Oh, I have a doozy of a swearing story.
And I can’t believe I haven’t blogged it before.
Around age 18 months, I was taking my daughter to my workplace for a little here’s-the-kid show and tell. She was in her car-seat right behind the driver’s seat. She had just finished a snack of applesauce and was chasing it with apple juice. About 4 blocks from work I hear the tell-tale sounds of vomit. I tell her to hang in there and quickly find a place to pull over so I can deal with the mess. I find a side street and park, open the back door and see that she is sitting there, held tight in her five-point harness, soaked with apple-barf.
I look in her eyes to convey my condolences; she blinks back at me and utters one single word…
“Fuck.”
A declarative statement, used perfectly in context and very clearly delivered.
I laughed and said, “Yes. I couldn’t agree more!”
She had assessed the situation pretty much the same as I would have in her position. I cleaned her up as best I could with what was in the car then detoured to my Mother’s to finish cleaning her up.
Clearly, she’d been listening the many times I’d uttered that word and you’d think that might have curbed my use, but it didn’t. I continue to curse like a sailor on shore leave but we have had many discussions about “time and place” — e.g. I don’t curse at work and she should not curse at school. She generally doesn’t curse at home either. At least not when she suspects we can hear her.
