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I can’t help thinking the story’s reader enunciates each word a little too clearly, pausing before and after the word shit. Leah is drawing while she listens to the story, and her colored pencil pauses in mid-air. “Is shit a bad word, Mom?” “Yes,” I say. “Yes, it is.” “Hmm. It sounds like a bad word.” And she returns to drawing without further comment. Huh. That was easy. I ponder whether this moment will be one Leah will always remember—the moment she learned shit from a story CD—the way I recall my own childhood moments of language awareness. The day I called my sister a bastard, so angry with her I wanted to call her something scandalous, though I didn’t know what the word meant (my mother was furious, of course). The first time I heard my dad say fuck in the company of men friends and being surprised he knew the word, so practiced was he at saying fiddlesticks that to hear profanity out of his mouth was something of a shock. Also a reminder he was an adult and someone about whom I didn’t know as much as I thought I did. At Ultimate Frisbee, a sport to which my husband and I have been dragging our kids for years, Leah recognizes the word shit finally, thanks to the story CD, and, exactly as I’d anticipated, passes her new knowledge on to her younger brother. At dinner, Ty wants to talk about it. “Why do people at Ultimate say shit so much, Mommy?” “Well, sometimes people say it during sports if they miss a kick or a catch or something. But it’s best to leave it on the field, and they do.” Ha. “So, they don’t say shit at home?” “Not usually.” “Would they say shit if they were playing sports at home?” “I don’t know.” “Well, what if I said shit at home?” Leah is listening with bright eyes, alert for my reply. “If you need to say shit, you can say it in your room,” I say. “It’s like potty talk, Ty,” Curt says, “People use that word for specific situations and places. But mostly, people don’t say it at all.” “Well, what if I called our fish a shit? What if it is a shit? It might be, you know.” Plainly, Ty suspects saying shit—and he’s right—in the context of this conversation will not earn him any discipline, and he’s taking advantage of it. Curt and I have to hide our smiles. A week later, while I’m walking Leah home from school with two friends coming to play, the topic of a bad word on the school slide comes up. “They roped off the slide, Mom, and only the playground duties know what the word is,” Leah says. “It was a really bad word. Maybe s-h-t—is that how you spell it?” “Or f-u-k,” Marie says. This from one of the most innocent girls I know. I can barely contain my surprise. Ty perks up. “What does that mean, Mommy?” “It’s a bad word,” Leah says. To my knowledge, Leah hasn’t progressed to this word, my personal albatross, and I’m surprised Marie knows it, can spell it, if only approximately. “What is it?” Ty says. “We’re not going to talk about it right now,” I say. I’m not up for explaining the F word to Ty with innocent—or not so innocent—neighbor kids around. But, you know what? We’re here. On the doorstep I’ve been dreading. I didn’t realize how here until one evening when I was stewing on words starting with F, combing the dictionary for a word to write on my Ultimate Frisbee team T-shirt. (Our team’s name was “F.”) I came up with “forty,” my age, which seemed more appropriate, if perhaps banal, than “frenzy” or “fantastic” or “fun.” “Forty?” Leah says. She sounds scornful. “Mom, your word should be fuckin’.” Fuckin’? Yes, siree, we’re not only on the doorstep, we’re through the door. “When did you learn that word?” I ask. “Oh, I don’t know.” She wanders away. “But forty is boring.” Well. I have to admit, though, something about that conversation has lessened my clutch response to swearing. Not unlike learning to relax when you hear the baby cry yet again in the middle of the night and you’re too tired to respond and she goes back to sleep on her own (or she doesn’t, but you don’t panic). Okay then. Bring on those conversations. I think I can handle them now. I confess, I blew it on my evening reading with Leah and the explanation for “eunuch” in an American Girl book (normally squeaky clean), but it was a lesson to me. Initially, I relied on the glossary to explain the term, which had sanitized the word completely: “English word for male servant within the harem.” And harem: “the women’s quarters of a palace.” A betrayal to its young audience, I thought, but I decided to go with it, unsure whether to explain castration. It lasted one evening. The next night, Leah said, “Why does the story keep saying a eunuch is not a man or a woman? What does that mean?” So I told her what a eunuch really is and why a man would become a eunuch, and we talked about related words used for animals—gelding and steer—and what neuter means. “Oh,” she said. I’m beginning to see the F word is pretty simple, really. To my kids, it’s just a swear word (I haven’t had to explain its meaning, though that will come), and they have shown me they can handle their new vocabulary. They’re not shouting shit in the supermarket or at the playground as I feared. Kissing Leah goodnight, I mull over the potential for mother/daughter conversations and whether she’ll continue to come to me for meaning, or whether she’ll do as I did and figure out words on her own. I still recall the day I asked my mother what rape meant and her vague, unsatisfactory answer, and my understanding then that I would need to research tricky words on my own. I know now, of course, why her answer was vague, and I know I would fumble with my own explanation. I know, too, that the understanding I gained that day long ago was just one of many tiny steps to independence. My concern about swearing, I realize, is not really about swearing. It’s about the loss of innocence that comes with learning new words. Each one gained is a sign of something lost, an incremental step away from childhood. Away from me. Yet, that’s what parenting is: allowing our children to grow and in the process, letting them go. One word at a time.
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1. Laura Belowski
May 03, 2006 21:21
What a funny story! What a great story teller you are. I was laughing so hard, my kids were begging me to tell them what was so funny, but the ironic thing was I couldn't!! You have a great sense of humor Joanna.2. Susan Stephenson
Aug 04, 2006 02:42
I loved your humour in this story, Joanna. I linked from your article in WOTR. You've motivated me to record the story of how I handled my 12-year-old's foray into online porn sites. Somehow, I suspect most publishers will be afraid of that one, too!