perfidy

My son is of an age where he is expanding his vocabulary at exponential rates. In his great rush to add new words to his repertoire, he is sometimes slightly less than scrupulous in assuring that his pronunciation of a new word is correct before jumping to the next bright, shiny new nym. In most cases, mispronunciations or misstatements are merely cute. Of course, most anything a two-year-old does short of a full on temper tantrum is cute.

There are exceptions. For example, there is a set of common words that, translated through the mind and underdeveloped vocal apparatus of a small child that come out not just wrong, but wrong. We first noticed this phenomenon when Sir John-the-unintentionally-profane began to utter his charming version of the phrase, “fire truck.” Imagine that the second through sixth letters are not there, and you’ll have a solid idea of what came out of my son’s mouth.

At first, this was amusing. It was amusing because I have a dirty mind and we were not in the presence of strangers. As soon as he shouted his adorable riff on “fire truck” in public, I was mortified. After a kindly grandmotheresque woman at the grocery store informed me that this is, in fact, a common occurrence, I felt better. I went straight back to amused, though I attempted to act unamused so as not to encourage potty-mouth.

John got a little better at saying fire truck, though when under stress or excitement he would revert to his original model. Things seemed to be getting better. Then, on the way home from Ohio, he sort of learned to word, “Bridge.” There are quite a lot of overpasses on the interstates. For hours, my wife and I were treated to the spectacle of a cute, high pitched voice saying, “Under bitch?” about once every twenty minutes.

Over the next few days, I waited, hoping for that magical moment when I would see a fire truck on a bridge. My wife was not amused when I pointed it out to my son and then nearly drove off the road when he said, “Fuck! Bitch!” A little later, the word frog also transmogrified into ‘fuck,’ increasing the likelihood that we would be embarrassed in public. Whenever John said something that sounded obscene in the presence of others, my wife would be at pains to quickly and loudly say, “I don’t see any frogs, John.”

Shortly thereafter, my wife made the colossal mistake of pointing out that the pickup in front of us was both large and black. This was unfortunate because, a) John loves trucks and won’t stop talking about them and b) he pronounces the word truck more like “cock.” I was laughing, but in a sick and terrified way, as my son kept repeating that phrase. Even more so when he added, philosophically, “I like it.”

A friend, who works at a day care center, told of us of a child there who was normally very quiet and reserved. Unbeknownst to the staff, he harbored a deep and rather possessive love for horses. He did care for other children playing with the horses, nor did he care to pronounce the first ‘s’ in that word. So when some other miscreants started playing with his horses, we waded in, fists flying, crying, “My whores! My Whores!” I didn’t think a two year old could be that advanced on the pimp career track.

Put that kid with mine, and you’ll have a regular def comedy jam, or the vocal track to a decent rap album or porn movie.

So remember, tell all the horses and bridges to shut the frog up, you trucksuckers.