So, I like to swear. A lot. In fact, it’s a horrible habit that, for the most part, I’ve been able to curb since the birth of my children. That’s not to say that I didn’t spew a few choice ones during my Hellish delivery of my oldest daughter (if you were within a square mile of that maternity ward, I guarantee you would have at a MINIMUM thrown in a “Jesus Christ, give that f*ck*ng woman some drugs already!”). Anyways, I digress….
When my husband and I found out we were expecting, one of the things we talked about was how we would have to watch our language around the baby. As it turns out, it didn’t turn out to be as hard as I thought. So now when my daughter runs into my shin with the sharp end of her Razor, or when I realize at 11:30 at night that I need to bring in 258 cupcakes to my daughter’s school, I am now quite seasoned at screaming “Sugar Cookies!!” instead of the other choice words that would have come out in my younger days (by the way, I’m also a fan of Holy Macaroni, God Bless America, and Mother Fudge Bucket…).
So now that our girls are older, I am becoming increasingly aware of how far the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction. Our kids now consider just about everything a swear word including “hate”, “stupid” and “dumb”…. watch any iCarly episode and you will get my drift. The funny thing is, though, that they not only consider these words bad, they consider it to be THEIR responsibility to rid the world of these terrible words. It’s like they are two vocabulary superheroes out to save all of mankind from having to be exposed to innocuously bad words. This, of course, hasn’t escaped our friends and family who know that our girls are complete, unapologetic narcs who have no qualms at screaming, “BAD WORD!” if someone so much as mumbles a word not fit for a Barney episode. And let’s be honest… who amongst us hasn’t expressed an opinion or two that might be grounds for such an blatant violation? Oh, let’s say for example….
“I hate Brett Favre”, or
“That movie, “PS I Love You” was completely dumb”, or
“I think Kanye West is an stupid, egotistical idiot”
You get my drift…..
I secretly think it’s pretty cool that they have these boundaries reflecting such innocence. I love that they are perfectly happy to still watch PBS Kids and that my eight-year old still smiles watching Sesame Street even if she only watches it “because her sister likes it”. I also realize that these days are numbered and it’s only a matter of time before it’s ME that has to be the vocabulary police.
As for now, I’m not too terribly worried. Last week we had a movie on where one of the characters unexpectedly yelled out the word, “SHIT!”. They didn’t even flinch. So much for my superheroes. 🙂
