Kept coming up in conversation yesterday. It was as if the universe fated us to have that discussion with our girls.
Here's what I mean:
The girls piled out of the bus yesterday and made their way up the leaf-strewn hill of our shared yard toward home. They do this every day, sometimes looking at the ground, sometimes charging straight ahead. Sometimes telegraphing kid messages to other bus kids. If I am able, I pop out and greet them. Yesterday something else was going on, so Vivian popped into the house first, slamming open (kid skill) the door and immediately shedding all vestiges of the school world right there in our galley kitchen.
"Mama, a fifth grader on the bus was telling me to put my middle finger out like this." And she demonstrated - not an actual bird, just a clumsily extended middle finger.
"Oh. Who told you to do that?"
Mazie bursts in, progressing as far as the threshold between kitchen and dining room before shucking her school stuff onto the floor. She picks up where Vivi left off: "Mama. It's a fifth grader who always gets in trouble and Miss Lewis is always having to move around on the bus. I told her not to do it."
Vivian: "I didn't do it that much."
Me: "Okay, that's a hand signal that's very insulting in our culture. You shouldn't do it unless you want to make someone very very angry. For your purposes, that means NEVER. Do you have any homework? Oh, yeah, FRIDAY!"
Mazie: "What does it mean, Mama?"
Me: "Let's talk about it a little later."
LATER:
We went on a woods ramble with some family friends and their three second graders. Here we are playing in the stream:
Then we went to the tree swing.
The kid in the stripes noticed it first. He got this really impish naughty look on his face (he's good at those) and said, "Umm...that tree has the F word on it." We tried to move on, but soon everyone noticed. The other dad said, "Oh, yeah, that's not a cuss word. It's actually an abbreviation for a song." Then he says in singsong voice, "If you see, Kaye, tell her I love her so..."
Hey, that's a good one!
Okay, so we moved on down the trail. The females of the bunch reached the road and the car first, so we were waiting around for the menfolk to catch up. We happened to be hanging around at roughly the same place as a couple of teenage guys with bikes. The teenagers took off on their bikes after a bit. One of the girls pipes up, "I just heard those boys say the F word. Did you hear it?" Same cute expression.
BWAH! It's not going away!
Then, guess what we watched for our Friday Christmas viewing? A Christmas Story. We made it to the scene where Ralphie loses the lugnuts, and Mazie paused the movie and asked me to skip it. She was actually afraid of hearing the slanderous word we'd always skipped in the past (what excellent, sheltering parents, you must be thinking) - even though Ralphie doesn't actually SAY it.
It's hard to know how to handle exposing your kids to the world. I realized we are at a place in life where this word is turning up so much that it's time to explain all about it. It's hard to know what parts to explain and how to do it. I tend to go with being as direct and honest as I can be.
I said, "Okay, girls. This word has come up several times today, hasn't it?" Yeah. "Well, would you like to know about it?" Yeah. "Okay. You know how there are a lot of words for bottom? You've got bottom, and butt, which is slightly more rude. Then there's even a cuss word for it - that's 'ass.'" At which point they discussed the contexts of "Ass" including Bible contexts versus everyday life.
"So. It's the same with the word F-!-@-K. It's the cuss word for 'mate'. There are lots of words for the same thing: Make love is my favorite because if you ever mate, you need to love the person and I love your daddy. Another one, that's more like 'butt' - commoner and less personal - is "Have sex." But the cuss word (like 'ass') for the same thing is 'F*&$'. That's why you never hear Daddy or I say it - it's a really bad word and people in our culture use it as the dirtiest word." I hope I did okay. They seemed satisfied with that explanation. They actually listened intently the whole time I was talking. They also did a lot of nervous nodding. So, who knows.
Just when I thought I'd gotten it all worked out, Mazie still wanted to skip the scene. I told her that Ralphie doesn't actually say the word. She still didn't want to watch it. I told her to just trust me, and stick with it.
She was delighted with how A Christmas Story handles the F-word. I've never seen someone so appreciative of the "-dge" sound. She laughed her relief and shot me a smile. My sweet modest child.
What of Vivian, you ask? Conjure that impish naughty look...that's Vivian. My other sweet modest child.
So, MERRY X-MAS 2012. Here we come!
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