#TBT: Where the H@## Did He Learn That?

In honor of #TBT (that’s Throw-Back Thursday) we are bringing back some of our (and your!) favorite pieces, many of them updated with new pics! Enjoy!

A few nights ago, after a particularly difficult couple of days of arguing with Ben – about his grades, his homework habits, writing his Bar Mitzvah thank you notes and 23 other things, he announced to his grandparents and aunt, who were over for dinner, “I think my mom has had her period for a whole year, she’s so bitchy.” It was so funny and outrageous, that instead of getting even madder at him, I burst out laughing.

And this, I’m afraid, is the problem.

When Ben was three, I picked him up from preschool, pulled into the garage and out of the car we went. When he got near the front hood,  he smacked his hand down and said sharply “damn it, mommy!” WHAT?!?!?! My mind started racing and wondering which terrible babysitter or teacher could have been poisoning my baby’s mind with such ‘filth’. As calmly as I could, I told him that we simply don’t use that language and asked him where he heard such things. Perplexed, he looked up at me and said “don’t you remember, mommy? When we were going to school today and you told me to hurry up, you hit right here on the car and said, ‘damn it Benny’, let’s go?”

Oops….

At four, Ben had an intense fascination with words and spelling. So, one day, as we were driving along in the car, he casually asked us how do you spell ‘shet’.  He meant ‘shit’. Gary and I looked at each other and tried so hard (and unsuccessfully) not to laugh – but the real dilemma was whether to tell him that the word was pronounced shit, not shet, or to just answer the question. Through my inappropriate laughter, I’m afraid, I simply answered the question and tried to explain that we really shouldn’t use that word. His answer? “How come, mommy – you say it all the time”…

Oops….

And then, when Ben was about eight, a few moms took our kids swimming at a neighborhood indoor club. The boys were playing in the water when a very large woman jumped in and began swimming laps. The problem was that the lap lanes were right next to the area where the boys were playing pool basketball – and rather poorly, at that – because the ball kept going into the lap lane. Whenever the boys missed, they laughed. When the boys laughed, the very large woman thought the boys were laughing at her very largeness (not the case at all – little kids aren’t concerned with anyone else but themselves, as we all know).

When the (very light, squishy) ball hit the (very mean, ornery) lady for about the third time, she said “you fucking kids better fucking knock it off!” in the meanest voice you have ever heard. One boy started crying (the lady looked pleased), one started laughing (I thought she was going to kill him), one screamed for his mom (we were already there by that time) and one (mine) slowly backed to the edge of the pool looking like a deer in headlights – too stunned and scared to run.

We hurried the boys out of the pool (one friend stayed behind to thoroughly admonish the mean lady) and got them to the locker rooms.

When Ben came out with his friend, Josh, he confessed to me “mommy, me and Josh called that lady the F-word in the locker room. Well, actually, I called the lady the F-word and I’m sorry.”

My response (bad mom): “Well, honey, she actually is the F-word, but it’s not really a very nice thing to call someone, even if you just said it between yourselves. Can you tell me how you exactly said it?”

“Well, I looked at Josh and said ‘that lady is the F-word’”.

“That’s what you said, ‘F-word’?”

Oh, what a parenting quandary – my kid thought the F-word was to say ‘F-word’ and not articulate the whole thing.

I asked him where, besides the lady in the pool, had he heard the F-word, as it isn’t one of the many inappropriate words that we routinely use in our home. He started to explain, that a couple of days ago, he and Gary were in the car and someone turned right in front of them and well, you can figure out the rest….

Oops, again!