Uh oh. What did he do this time? Stick Lincoln Logs up his nose? Painted stuff with paste? Tried to stink Lincoln Logs up his nose after he painted them with paste?
"Drew has been saying bad words today."
So I asked for details. One, because that's the good mother thing to do. Two, because that's as close as I'll get to a PG-13 movie in the near future. I don't even bother watching the Oscars, because if it's not an animated picture, I don't have a freaking clue what they're talking about.
Life of Pi? Yummy! I love pie! Do you have any key lime?
Argo? Don't you mean we go? Gah.
Beasts of the Southern Wild? Hey, are y'all talkin' 'bout opossums? Them critters is mean!
Lincoln? Ahhh! Lincoln Logs! Finally, one I understand.
She said that Drew was watching a little girl play computer games and shouted, "Sh*t! You lost!"
The teacher thought he said the word that rhymessssssss..hit, but discounted it with "There's no way Amanda's son would say that word" philosophy. Whew! Dodged a bullet there.
And that bought me some time until later when she took the kids to the playground to play tag. Drew shouted, "WHAT THE F**K?! Come back here!"
Awesome. And I didn't think it could get any worse.
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| This didn't actually happen, by the way (as far as you know). |
Everybody knows that there's a scale for cuss words. If Ross said it on Friends, then it's lower-ranking, and certainly not okay, but probably won't get me a call from DFCS. But if it can only be said on HBO after midnight, and it's the mothertrucker of all cuss words, then I'm probably going to have to explain myself. (DFCS, call me.)
When Drew shouted that obscenity on the playground, all twenty pairs of 4-year-old ears heard it, along with several pairs of adult ears who decided that the delinquent kid's mother needed a good talkin' to.
Goodbye good girl rep! It was nice knowin' ya!
You know when a teacher talks to you about your toddler's potty mouth (No? Just me?), and suddenly, you feel the need to defend yourself, to prove that you're not throwing around four-letter words every other breath.
"Sh*t, why did he say that?"
I'm kidding, I'm kidding! Because, seriously, I do not say any bad words in front of my children, especially the impressionable little one who tends to stick paste-covered toys up his nose. But it was hard to prove that after Drew used both cuss words correctly and in context. Ahem.
I was so embarrassed!
So just like our parents did with movies like Stand By Me and Goonies, I blamed the media for my son's less-than-stellar verbiage.
"Oh, you know what it is? It's those YouTube videos he watches. He loves to watch videos of teenagers playing Super Mario Bros, and occasionally, I'll hear them a bad word, so I'll tell Drew to find another video that is appropriate."
She was really nice not to point out that maybe I should look into better parental controls on YouTube and/or not allow my son to watch homemade videos of kids talking about Mario Bros while trying to look really cool. Or, you know, 48-year-old gamers living in their mother's basement, whatever. So then I felt the need to defend why I let him watch those videos, too.
I swear to you, there was more defensive strategy going on than in the NFL. But I kept fumbling the ball or some other really impressive football analogy that I would make if I knew a darn thing about football.
Hey, notice the use of the word "darn"? See, it's totally not my fault.
Speaking of, on the way home, I forgot to turn into the grocery store, and I said, "Dang it!" Drew said, "Mama! Dat's a bad word! I'm sworry, but you gonna hava go to time out."
When Drew talks to me in that sweet, little Toddlish language, I usually get lost in his cuteness. But I had to focus and seize the opportunity to talk to him about words that are okay/ not okay to say.
And what I learned was that Drew had a firm grip on almost every cuss word out there, not just the two that he brought to preschool that day for show-and-tell. It's like his superpower.
So there's no more homemade Mario Bros YouTube videos until he's at least 45. And I'm putting his iPod Touch on the mantle, out of reach... right beside my Mother of the Year Award.
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