Beren deMotier * writer * artist * human  

copyright June 7, 2003

We’re Gonna Be Rich!

It’s hard to be a grown-up nowadays without resorting to colorful language.  There’s the economy, the war, the layoffs at work, the driver in the next lane who doesn’t believe in blinkers and the letter from the IRS saying that the tax return is weeks away if only you’ll fill out yet another form.

It’s enough for anyone to sport some four letter words.

            Problem is, we don’t want our kids to use those four letter words, and we as the childrearing books constantly remind us, we are their primary teachers, like it or not.

            My wife and I are kind of old fashioned about things like these.  While we know our kids hear these words at school, and read them scratched onto the bathroom walls, we still maintain this vain hope that the f-word won’t begin leaking out of their mouths at regular intervals as they mature.  Neither of us swore whatsoever as kids, we would have died rather than use the kind of words you hear nowadays.  But in college we became potty mouths and that’s a hard habit to break.

            Which is why we’re hoping our kids won’t start.  And so we have to stop, because it’s darned contagious.  Which I know only too well.  When our son was a toddler, and we were in the middle of moving, starting a new job, and adjusting to a new city, he started saying “shit, shit” while I was driving, because surely that was the appropriate thing to say since his mother was doing so at regular intervals.  Stopped my swearing cold.  My wife, however, since she wasn’t doing as much of the carting about town, didn’t have that opportunity, and her habit has only grown as the kids have, though she can usually (but not always) hold it in when they’re around.  So the other day, when we announced to our kids that we would be starting a “cuss jar” to discourage swearing (by us!) and my wife said she was going to put in a dollar whenever she said a bad word, the kids threw their arms around each other gleefully and squealed, “We’re going to be rich!!”

            Luckily my wife has a good sense of humor about herself or that scene could have turned ugly.

            Not that she means to swear like a sailor.  She doesn’t want to be Rage Woman when life does an abrupt turn, or do a constant Bruce Willis impression from Die Hard (Yippee-kie-yay Mother-F*****), thus the willingness to put her money when her mouth goes.

            Of course, some parents just decide to skip worrying about it altogether.  We know one woman who told us her daughter was going to be hearing the f-word in kindergarten anyway so why should she worry about it?

            Then there are the “do as I say, not as I do” parents who “Jesus, Mary and Joseph” all over the place but are upset by the slightest potentially blasphemous utterance from their offspring, a time-honored double standard for which parents are famous.

            Myself, I am good as gold, except when I’m not.  Certain kinds of frustration can only be expressed through expletives, such as when you try to take out the garbage with a baby in one arm and the bottom of the garbage tears and three day old pasta salad spills out on the kitchen floor you’ve just mopped while wearing the aforementioned baby against your sweltering body in ninety degree heat.  Nothing but a good swear word will do, preferably seven or eight.

            Thank heavens no one was listening but the baby so I didn’t have to pay up, though it will only be a matter of time before the baby tells on me, one way or another!

            Bad mommy!

Actually, I’ve tried to explain this use versus abuse theory of expletives to our eleven year old son.  Not wanting him to get the geek of the year award throughout his school career, he needs to be acquainted with the appropriate use of bad language.  And since both children have a wry enough sense of humor to throw their arms around each other and squeal “We’re going to be rich” with the exquisite comic timing of seasoned pros, I think they can handle a little gray area.  Rule number one, don’t do it at school, in front of grandparents or other adults.  Rule number two, best not to use on first dates, job interviews or when you meet your potential significant other’s parents.  Rule number three, once in a while, when you are among your pals, it is OK to get into the spirit and use a little colorful language when it is really appropriate, ditto when your heart is broken, you failed a test, or slammed your finger in the door (as long as rules number one and two aren’t being broken by such use).

            Hopefully this is good advice.  And not one that will come back to bite me in the b-u-t-t (I’m not allowed to say it anymore).  But (there, I got away with it) it’s the best we can do under the circumstances and be honest.  Which, after all, is another important thing to teach our children first hand.