Wombat Diet

Mrs.Badger once became so exhausted with 6 year old Master Badger’s references to poop and other hilariously smutty topics that she uttered the word BOTTOM repeatedly during a school run with Master B and an increasingly wide-eyed friend of his. First, it was a surprise, then a giggle and a snigger, then it was hysterically funny, then, gradually, shocking and inappropriate, finally, embarrassing.

Muuuuuum!! STOP!

Boys of a certain age were warier afterwards of anything that might set her off. It never happened again but the occasion passed into family history.

I was reminded of this when I encountered this YouTube version of Scarface. I didn’t make it quite to end. “OK, OK, enough” I said.

Wife in the North blogged recently about where children pick up bad language. It’s at school of curse, isn’t it? Neither Mrs.B. nor I grew up with parents who ever swore, except, perhaps, when a thumb was hammered. I don’t believe we were very different as parents but I’ll have to confirm that later as the testimony of teenagers is not entirely to be relied upon (of course one is guilty).

I know that the first uncomplimentary thing my son said about me under his breath, at the age of four, was in Dutch. “Coprophague” he said to himself under his breath, in Dutch (OK, I’m full of it, he said poopater), in the back of the car, dissenting over something trivial. I should have laughed, indeed I did secretly, but I put the frighteners on him about repeating that sort of language from school, which is where he learned it–we didn’t speak that language at home.

Many years later I was slightly mortified to find that my office door was open one day so that my secretary may have heard my using some English vernacular on the phone when speaking with an old friend, casually and without being provoked at all. A button had been pushed whose existence I’d forgotten about. Thufferin’ thuckotash, how did that happen? I cringed inwardly and decided to act as if nothing had happened. Do we have some innate tendency that is uncontrolled in the case of sufferers of Tourette’s syndrome. I am you know what if I know. A coprolalic.

Tags: Misc