Today my children had dental check-ups. At the end of these appointments the dentist always makes a balloon for each child out of a latex glove and ties it off with dental floss.
As BH was driving the girls home from my parents house this evening they were playing with thier latex glove balloons. He hears one of the girls say, "Let's make it stick up it's middle finger!" and then they worked together oh so nicely to make this happen. If only we always had such cooperation and togetherness!
Now we are perplexed about where they have learned about this gesture, because I make damn sure the kids are no where in sight when I flip the bird to their dad. I have that much control over my impulses at least.
They tell us that apparently on a recent trip with their Poppie to Walgreens, someone apparently disagreed with Poppie's driving, honked their horn and gave him the finger.
Nice.
So they had a discussion about what it meant and how it is just as bad to do that as it is to say a bad word, because it is like sign language for a bad word. He then asked what they thought they should do about the choice they made.
#2 wanted to hunt down the man who flipped Poppie the bird and tell him about how it is wrong to do that.
#1 wanted to pop the balloon.
BH decided they just needed to tell me about what happened.
So they did when I got home. I reiterated what had already been said, and added that it was a sign for a really bad word.
AND thus began the questions.
"Is it worse than the SH word? " asks #2.
"Where did you hear about the SH word?" I exclaim in a remarkably calm tone of voice.
"You know...the Shut Up word." answers #2
"Oh....well....ummm...yes it is worse than the SH word." I stammer.
"Is it worse than the A word?" from #1
"Yes it is worse than the A word." says I fighting back the giggles.
"How about the CR or maybe it is KR word?" again from #2.
"?"
PAUSE
"Oh you mean crap?" I state.
"OOOOOOOOHHHHHhhhhhhh! You said a bad woooooorrrrddddd Mommy!" Chorus #1 and #2.
"It is time for bed now children." I declare.
Good to see that they are still fairly innocent.
Oh yeah, apparently when they got home they popped the balloon AND cut off it's middle finger too, just for good measure.
2 comments:
i've raised john with the notion that there are no bad words - only appropriate and inappropriate ways and places to use them...regardless - he's a conservative and has ruled for himself that cuss words are bad.
one day we were talking (can't remember details) and he says something about "the C word" and i was pretty taken aback because that's definitely a word with pretty specific times and places for use!
but we finally determined that the C word was CRAP :) lol :) we told him he needs to think twice about calling crap the C word :) since for most of us it has a TOTALLY different meaning!!! lol :)
I really like the idea about not calling them bad words.
I never thought of it that way for reasons that fail to come to me, as I spend a lot of time and effort avoiding the "bad" label when it comes to my many interactions with children.
It is always refreshing to realize that our kids are not quite as informed about certain things as we fear.
Another funny about crap. My oldest daughter heard us saying it and thought we were saying Crab, and thus would go around saying, "oh crab" when the occaision warratned it. We still use the phrase around here.
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