February 20, 2007
Little Boy (Working) Blue
filed under: Stuff to laugh atUh-oh. Max has learned some new words. An exchange Sunday morning:
Me: Hey buddy! I'm off tomorrow, and we're going to spend all day together! We can go to the Tea Lounge, maybe to the zoo...Max: Are we gonna see the COW?
Me: Sure, we can see the cow.
Max: What's the cow's name?
Me: You know. What is it?
Max: Agatha. (Pause) Are we going to see the f**king SHEEP?
Me: ... [blink] [blink] ... um...
Don't work blue, kid, you'll never work the big rooms...
Posted by rjt at February 20, 2007 03:28 PMMy daughter curses like a sailor unless we are vigilant. We just ask her to choose better words. And she generally makes substitutions involving food, like "Oh shit!" becomes "oh bananas!"
Did he want to see the fucking sheep, do you suppose, or did he want to see the sheep, fucking? Worth pondering.
Posted by: perj at February 20, 2007 09:12 PMSo far we have no indication that he knows the word means anything more specific than a modifier/intensifier. And the bill for letting him listen to American Idiot since he was 18 mos. old begins to come due...
Oh, bananas...
Posted by: rjt at February 20, 2007 09:23 PMKeaton likes to sing. A lot. (People have referred to him as an iPod, but at not yet 2 1/2, he's really more like an iPeed.) One of his favorite nursery rhymes is "Ding dong dell." The second line of which, you may recall, is "pussy's in the well." Try looking comfortable when he's belting that one out in the grocery checkout lane.
Posted by: KG at February 21, 2007 01:58 PMWell, these kids are clearly going to be the audience for this year's Newbery Award winning book (The Higher Power of Lucky) when they get old enough to read it.
The big hoo-hah, causing many schools, libraries and even some bookstores to refuse to stock it is that on page one (!) the word "scrotum" is used, as the central character (who is 10 yrs. old) overhears someone telling about how a dog was bitten by a snake on that particular body part.
Ye gods, what an uproar in the world of kids' books! One wonders, sometimes, in what world these adults think kids are growing up...
Posted by: Procrastimom at February 21, 2007 03:47 PMI see that "The Higher Power of Lucky" has an Amazon sales rank of 43 right now. I wonder what it was before this controversy was stirred up? People ought to have learned by now that the best way to get everybody to read a book is to ban it. Librarians aside, the high sales seem to indicate that most people have no problem with anatomical terms being used in a correct anatomical sense. (Keaton will sometimes waltz through stores chanting "Keaton has a penis, Daddy has a penis, Mommy has NO penis." I think all young kids have a fascination with naming their body parts, but to Keaton a penis is no more (or less) interesting than his bellybutton or nose.)
You might want to get on the bandwagon. "The Great Skinner Scrotum" would probably sell a million copies, if you can get it out before the brouhaha dies down and becomes dated.
Posted by: KG at February 21, 2007 04:47 PMOkay, Max did NOT get the bad word from me. Max's Mom DID get the bad word from me because when I was driving her to school (she was maybe four) the car skidded on the ice and did a 180 at a big intersection in front of a giant truck and "fuck" seemed like the appropriate response at the time.
Mama-San
P.S. I am planning to buy Max "The Higher Power of Lucky" asap!