perfidy

Did your mama hit you? Then you said it right.

Recently, my son has been exposed (as all children eventually are) to foul language, cursing, swearing, oaths, and the like. Surprisingly, little of this exposure has come from me. As responsible parental units, we have taken a moderate approach in discouraging the boy from dropping the F-bomb and its cousins. We don't freak out, we don't appear shocked and horrified; we just calmly beat the crap out of him, point out that it is impolite to say things like that, and that it is something that we generally don't do. This method has proven to be fairly effective.

The other day, I was watching a zombie flick late in the evening. The boy woke up, and we watched some brain munching for a bit. John pointed out, accurately, that there was a rather copious amount of bad words along with the brain eating. I explained that when people are scared, they often use bad words. (Screenwriters also use bad words when they are frightened by deadlines or being viewed as "inauthentic" or "not edgy.") This led to a discussion of the appropriate use of bad language.

The boy played with the envelope a little.

"Well, I'll just use bad words when I'm scared." No, not really.

"Okay, just when there's a spider." Nope. If it's dark. If my sister sits on me. If mommy doesn't buy me a toy. If I see Brittney Spears. If...

Well, I wanted to watch the rest of the movie. "It's time to go to bed, and not use bad words."

"Well, I'll just use bad words when I'm being chased by zombies."

"Son, you have my permission to use any bad word you can think of, as many times as you want." His eyes lit up with the possibilities.

"But only if the zombies come, and not before." Despair. "Now back in bed."

I was reminded of this incident when I ran across this little gem, from someone who takes a rather opposite approach to swearing for the very young:

For reasons that are not yet clear to me, a lot of parents we know are worried about their children learning cuss words. This is a truly charming display of futility. In the world we live in, even the most sheltered Amish child will have learned enough swear words to cuss like a longshoreman or the Irish by the time it is five.

So I am approaching the issue from a much more realistic perspective. I am not going to waste energy keeping Cordelia from swear words. Instead, I’m going to skip a step and just make sure that she is able to use them in more colorful ways than her schoolyard chums.

If some dirty little sprog says she is a poo-poo head, I want her to be able to call him a “ball-draining cum junkie”. She should be able to deflect all those silly little schoolyard taunts by tossing off a casual “Lick my ass, fucktard.”

And if some boy says she has cooties, I want her to fire right back with “Yeah. Well, we’ll see how easy you say that when my cock’s in your mouth.” This doesn’t make any sense, of course, but hopefully it’ll confuse and distract him enough for her to really put the boot in.

I see this as simply giving her the skills she needs to function in a complex and ever-changing world.

[wik] I realized, just as soon as Johno pointed it out, that my post was mysteriously truncated. In reconstituting the post, I realized that the text at the link is different from the quote above. Sometime between Thursday, May 15, 2003 4:55:06 PM and earlier this afternoon, Jeff Vogel bowdlerized (a bit) his own text. This is the new version on his website:

For reasons that are not yet clear to me, a lot of parents we know are worried about their children learning cuss words. This is a truly charming display of futility. In the world we live in, even the most sheltered Amish child will have learned enough swear words to cuss like a longshoreman or the Irish by the time it is five.

So I am approaching the issue from a much more realistic perspective. I am not going to waste energy keeping Cordelia from swear words. Instead, I’m going to skip a step and just make sure that she is able to use them in more colorful ways than her schoolyard chums.

If some dirty little sprog says she is a poo-poo head, I want her to be able to lash out with an uninterrupted spray of obscenities, most of which will have no meaning to either her or her opponent. The enemy may not understand why he has just been called a “fucktard,” of course, but hopefully it’ll confuse and distract him enough for her to really put the boot in.

I see this as simply giving her the skills she needs to function in a complex and ever-changing world.

How disappointing, and how glad I didn't empty the trash after I deleted the word doc that contained the original.