“Look daddy, it’s a fire truck!” Tristan spontaneously shouted as we were driving in the family van.
As parents of a 2 ½ year old we were used to spontaneous vocal eruptions coming from our son as he loved to exercise his new found talent, talking. He did this quite often and at the decibel level of a low flying jet airplane. The only problem was that his pronunciation was still a little off. Tristan wasn’t able to master the use of the “tr” sound in “truck” so he simply used the first letter of the first word, “fire”. This feat delighted his older siblings who thought it was hilarious that their little brother could get away with uttering words in public that would have resulted in a mouthful of soap for them. They would repeatedly ask him to say “fire truck” over and over again which he was happy to do as he saw it delighted his brother and sisters so much. Their parents didn’t think it was so delightful and put an immediate halt to it.
This was not the first time one of our children has mispronounced words and sounded like a construction worker nor would it be the last.
Ashley, our number three child and second daughter was very impressionable. After her first week in kindergarten she came home with some new and shocking adjectives that she learned from the little beasties she shared the classroom with. These were the unfortunate children that, at no fault of their own, were burdened with parents that were less than stellar in social skills and proper parenting. I suspect it was from those parents, that probably spent more time watching Jerry Springer than with their children, is where these poor kids picked up their vocabulary. Ashley uttered the “D” word to express her displeasure with something. Her mother promptly sent her to her room and informed the father as soon as he returned. This was one of the normal daily routines for me as every day, when I would come in from work; I would get a rundown of the day’s offences from the inmates of our little sanitarium. I went into Ashley’s room to find her sniffling on the bed, dreading the emanate end of her little life. I said to her.
“Ashley, mommy tells me you said a bad word today, is that true?”
The reply was her bursting into tears and collapsing onto the bed. Ashley was always known as our little melodramatic actress, and she was living up to her reputation perfectly.
“Don’t you think that we should talk to Jehovah God about this and ask for forgiveness?” I asked.
She nodded yes and I said a prayer out loud for her asking for help and forgiveness. I asked her if she would like to say her own prayer and she agreed. This little five-year-old sobbing child kneeled next to her bed and began.
“Jehovah, I’m sorry I said the “D” word. Please help me not to say the “D” word, and the “H” word, and the “S” word….” and continued through the alphabet with her shocked parents looking on.
Another of our potty mouthed offspring, Benjamin, once commented on a Volvo car that went by our van and his older sister gasped as he had mispronounced it as a lower part of the female anatomy that she had just learned about herself in the mandatory anatomy lesson the state requires in the public school system. Tristan called ice cream “ass cream” and another memorable phrase came from Ben when he announced to the family one evening.
“Wow! My glands are huge!”
Ben also innocently but very inappropriately asked his 16-year-old Aunt Brandy how her sponge bath went during one of our family trips to the cabin in Oregon.
Recently we were over at some friend’s house, and we were discussing their children. They had three boys. The first one was a good musician and the second one was a computer genius. The third son, Steven, lacking the credentials of his older brothers blurted out to the gathering.
“Aww man! I guess I just got screwed in the genes!”
Children say things that mean something else all the time but it gets real interesting when adults, who should know better, do it.
My great uncle Johnny was in his late 60’s he uttered an unforgettable phrase in front of his three teenage great nephews as we were on the way to the market. It had started raining and from the front of the car we heard Uncle Johnny mutter.
“Oh, I forgot my rubbers!”
Of course, he meant galoshes or rubber shoe covers but to a teenage boy it meant took on a whole different meaning. You go, Uncle Johnny.
My mother was a great one for uttering the wrong thing at the wrong time for, at times, she didn’t speak English, she spoke British. When she and my grandmother came over to the United States from England their ship landed them in New York City. They had to spend the night in a hotel before getting on their train for California. My grandmother sent my then 19-year-old mother down to the lobby desk to request a wakeup call. Imagine the look on the face of the male desk clerk as this attractive girl with the cute British accent requested.
“Could you please send someone at 5:30 am to knock me and my mother up?”
When they finally made it to the San Francisco Bay area where my grandfather had bought the family a home my mother again was victim to her native tongue. This time it was at a shoe store. In the early 1950’s there were not that many black people in England, so my mother thought it unique that the salesclerk in the store was black. When the lady asked my mother if she could help her find what she wanted my mother replied.
“Oh, yes, I’m looking for a brown pair of shoes”.
The clerk asked, “What shade of brown are you looking for”?
The shade of brown my mother requested was very a very common shade of brown in England but in the States, it was a negative reference to the black race that started with the letter “N”. My mother thought that these Americans are very odd as the salesclerk got upset and just stormed off for no reason at all.
Her next adventure was to go to the store to get rubber bands. When she walked into the five and dime store, as department stores were called back then, my mother asked the clerk in the isle.
“Pardon me, could you tell me where you keep the rubbers, please”?
Again, she thought that these Americans were certainly an odd bunch as the clerk blushed and in a hushed voice said to her.
“You can’t get those here; you have to go to the pharmacy”!
“How queer,” mother thought to herself, “why would they only sell elastic bands at an apothecary”?
Off she went to the “apothecary/pharmacy” and approached the teller with the same question as before. Again, she was met with a blush and another whispered reply.
“We don’t have them up here! You must ask the pharmacist”!
This was almost too much for mother as she was now sure she knew why Great Britain let the colonies go, they were all quite mad! She didn’t know what to expect as she approached the old gentleman behind the pharmacist’s counter with her request. He fixed her with a long disapproving stare and went off into the back room and came out with a box of odd shaped square packets with an “O” shaped ring in them.
“What are those”? Mother asked the pharmacist.
“Rubbers, isn’t that what you wanted, condoms”?
Now it was my mother’s turn to turn red faced and rush out of the store. This language barrier carried on for several years until she became “Americanized”, although it did resurface on occasion much to her children‘s delight.
Over the years we have become acquainted with many people from all over the world. Angie and I were in the Netherlands visiting friends and constantly heard the word “muck-a luck” in a sentence. At our inquiry we were informed it means “easy, or easy to do”.
We have friends from Bagdad, Iraq who shocked Angie with the “F” bomb several times. That word in Arabic means “shut” and Angie thought they really disliked all doors as they would loudly exclaim “F.. the door!” whenever anyone entered the room.
Of course, the cultural differences between many countries of the world make for some interesting times also. On one of the first dates my mother had with my father, he took her out to a fancy restaurant that served “peel and eat” shrimp as an appetizer. Mother had never experienced such things in England, so she bravely grabbed one of the odd looking delicacies and proceeded to take a polite bite of one, shell and all. My father just calmly watched her as she chewed the first bite and took another.
“How do you like them”? He asked.
“Oh, they are lovely” replied mother.
After she had finished her first one, father, with his charming smile, showed her how they might be even more enjoyable if you peeled them first.
Today, our children will utter inappropriate words just to hear their mother inhale sharply. They are very easily entertained. Angie, however, is not innocent to the use the use of inappropriate words herself for, as she puts it, “I’m swearing a lot more now that I’m getting older”. In her defense, she usually has a good reason for it. Mostly it deals with her “@*$# dogs”, Jack and Moose. Jack is a boxer/pit bull mix and Moose is an extremely large Great Dane.
The dogs are obsessed with her and follow her everywhere she goes. She will turn around in the kitchen with an armload of boiling hot creations from the oven and almost trip over the inevitable large beast lurking in her shadow. “@*%&^!” would fly as she attempts to prevent becoming a poster child for the Shiners’ burn center. I would call out from the other room.
“What was that you said”?
“Nothing” would be the muttered reply through clenched teeth.
Her most famous improper utterance happened on a motorcycle trip to the wine country with several family members. All the riders and passengers on the motorcycles were tied in through a two-way radio system hooked up on our helmets, as was the chase car being driven by our oldest son with his fiancé. On a sharp turn Angie thought I was leaning the motorcycle too far into the other lane that had a large truck coming our way.
“Oh @*%&^!” blurted Angie with her favorite inappropriate word that refers to excrement.
Little did she know that the radio system was on “vox” which meant that her potty mouth was loudly heard by the entire group. She didn’t find this out until she heard our nephew, Joshua, say over the radio in a sing song way
“Angie said a bad word”!s he in his mid 70’ny.nt meaning.seith her shocked parents looking on.r help and forgiveness. I asked her if she would like to s
I, myself, have run into the inappropriate phrase department many times. This is usually done at the worst possible times. As an Elder in the Christian congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses I am occasionally called on to deliver public discourses in other congregations.
During one such discourse I was looking at my outline and saw the next point started with the word “Should” as in “Should we….” As I started that section, I realized I was ahead of myself and I should be on the section before that. So in mid “Shhh” I corrected myself and started off again with “It happens …..” “Ding!” went the little bell in my head.
“Did you just say what I thought you said?” my panic-stricken mind asked itself.
One look at the shocked expressions in the audience answered the question for me. I didn’t stop but kept on going as I know the worst thing you can do is stop so that you emphasize the error.
I had a friend who did that. He mispronounced the word six by asking for the consideration of paragraph “sex” in a meeting we were at. He made the mistake of stopping when laughter greeted his mistake.
“I didn’t say what you thought I said” he blurted.
The audience replied with more laughter. His face turned red only to be greeted by even more laughter as his poor daughter in the audience melted into her seat wishing she could disappear.
“Stop it!” he said, and the audience fell apart.
So, at the end of my discourse when the congregation applauded and I wasn’t dragged into the back room for a well deserved beating I realized that they also might have had the same problem and could only sympathize.