The Curse

For a long time, my son didn’t really talk. At his three-year checkup last summer, he was diagnosed with developmental and speech delays and referred to our local school district for evaluation and placement.

He began attending a twice-weekly preschool class in December, and after an initial adjustment period, his use and understanding of language has flourished. Just last week, we engaged in a spirited discussion about which television show he wanted to watch (the highlight was when he insisted on Scooby Doo, which forced me to put it on C-Span until he changed his tune), and at the grocery store over the weekend he told me we needed to buy cheese, peas, and musical jumping beans in order to make rocket soup. So there’s been some improvement in that area.

This is great on a number of levels, of course, but there is one major adjustment that has had to be made: the language my wife and I use. I’m not the most foul-mouthed person I know, but I do employ more than the occasional f-bomb…and a-hole…and s-bomb (that sounds stupid; why is there no good shorthand way to say that I say “shit”?). For the most part, we haven’t had to worry about little ears picking up the naughty words we say and a little mouth repeating them. Now, we do.

My wife and I were playing Words With Friends tonight, coming down the homestretch, while our son finished up his second viewing of Cars 2 and played with Lightning McQueen, Finn McMissile, and Mater on the living room floor (I think he’s actually working on the script for Cars 3). I had a pretty good lead until she played “pounced” across two Double Word spaces for a score of 69 and a 36 point advantage. I closed the gap to one, she surged ahead again with another solid total, and it appeared she had the game in hand.

Only, she didn’t. After I played an “it/at” combo by dropping a single “t” into a corner, just to pick up a couple points without substantially changing the board, she fired back with “eyes” for seven points. It was clear that she was just trying to clear her letters and seal the win, but in doing so, she put an “e” in perfect position between Triple Letter and Triple Word spaces. And, as luck would have it, I had a “j” (worth ten points) and the letters to make an actual word.

The result: “Jeer”, for 99 points and the game.

I hid a smile as she asked if I had played yet (we’re quite impatient with one another while playing a game when in the same room; it tends to turn into the Speed Version of Words With Friends) and awaited her reaction. It didn’t disappoint.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” she said.

That was to be expected. She’s been swearing at me for almost twelve years now. Twelve glorious years. What I wasn’t really expecting was the four-year-old voice that chimed in from the peanut gallery.

“You pucking kidding me?” he said (the letter “f” still gives him some trouble). Then, as my wife and I looked at each other and struggled mightily to avoid bursting into laughter, he said it again. “You pucking kidding me?”

My wife tried to be the bad guy - “No, Mama shouldn’t have said that. That’s not something you say.” – but he was undaunted. “You pucking kidding me…you pucking kidding me…you pucking kidding me…?” Finally, I managed to swallow a laugh and repeat what my wife had said. He eyed me for a second, considering it, the words on the tip of his tongue, before deciding that this wasn’t a limit he wanted to test. His voice dropped into a low growl that he uses when he’s being funny.

“Okay.”

Crisis averted, this time. But clearly, we’re going to have to start working on our euphemisms.