For the longest time my favorite cuss word was Dammit. This was due to certain family objections to my over use of the word F*ck when telling my humorous stories. And Dammit seemed innocuous enough yet still express a level of emotion.
Until my 2 year old said it for the first time. Shock, pleasure and embarrassment all went through me. It was both adorable and horrifying and I knew my days of cussing were over. Knowing I still needed a some sort of cuss word, I chose Crap as my staple.
But as I age and my children age, certain cuss words seem to try to leak back into my vocabulary. First they leaked into my emails and then into my writing and now they’re trying for a foothold in my vocabulary. And I took a look at them from a parenting perspective.
When I was growing up we all knew the words and we said the words and we knew the meaning of the words, we just never did it in front of adults. As teens we were bolder and said them freely even in front of adults… as long as they didn’t know us. Then when I became an adult it was “F*ck that! I get to say whatever I want!”
As a parent, if you’re child is cussing you’re a bad parent. Funny as it may be… you’re still a bad parent who obviously cusses in front of his kids and now your little evil spawn is spreading it around to the other angels. Like the cold virus.
And yet, one day I got a report that one of my children had said the “F” word. I was surprised and frankly thought there had to be a misunderstanding. Cussing was gone from the household, even when the tykes were fast asleep or not even around! And we never went anywhere else, so other than school, explain to me how he’d said THAT word.
So I question the little kindergartner about how I heard he’d said a bad word and the conversation goes like this…
Me: I heard you said a very bad word.
Conor (a little regretful): Yeah, I lost my self control, I’m sorry.
Me: What was the word? They didn’t tell me?
Conor: Probably, I said Stupid
Me: I think they said it started with an “F”
Conor: Oh, yeah, I remember now. I said “Fine”
I smiled and dropped the subject, knowing how much attitude he can put into that one little word. (Admittedly he learned that from me!) And remembering the day I could have sworn I’d heard my kids once accidentally utter F*^k in the sentence they were saying. I just imagined someone else misheard something out of his little mouth and since he loses his temper a lot, he took the punishment picking something he’d already done as the reason for it. The punishment being the school calling me and telling me to come pick up Conor.
So I started wondering if it wouldn’t be completely advisable to list out ALL the cuss or taboo words, how to pronounce them and why to never say them. And then lay out the severe consequences should I ever hear them or it EVER get back to me that your saying them.
After all, this way the little lawyers won’t have any loopholes. And if they are using them… well at least I’ve made sure they damn well better be using them correctly!