Bad Words

In high school my brother had a teacher who said bad words. And by bad words I don't mean she cursed when she got upset, I mean she literally said, "Bad words! Bad words!" instead of saying them. With my son approaching the age where he can start repeating things (the much feared age of repeatability) I'm thinking about adopting my brother's teacher's method.

Now I'm not one to use much foul language (my steering wheel would disagree with me here, especially if someone is texting while driving next to me). However, in my formative years I picked up some improper non-expletives that have stuck with me as my exclamations of choice, and I don't want Eli to start picking up on them.

If they're non-expletives you may question why it would matter. It matters because I don’t want my kid learning to use coarse, often hollowed out, language to describe people or default to “less offensive” exclamations, as if shouting “moron” is somehow better than shouting (insert bad word here) because it’s less offensive to most people.

The fact that the word moron (and retard, idiot, etc) have all been co-opted for derogatory name calling when they were not originally intended for such use just proves how easy it is to cheapen language and cultivate bad words.

When we were kids my brothers and I would tease and fight with each other every now and then (ok, all the time). One time one of our younger sisters was trying to get involved (perhaps as the UN’s first four-year-old peace keeper) and one of us snapped, “oh shut-up!” at her. Devastated, she ran to our mom and told her, “he called me shut-up!”

Instead of thinking she was so young she misunderstood the remark, I think she actually really understood it for what it is. It is an insult. It's how you tell someone they and anything they have to say doesn't matter. She had picked up from the tone what the true meaning behind the word was.

And kids really latch on to these words. In the same way kids prefer candy to vegetables, they prefer bad words to good. And since we keep raising the bar on what a bad word is, it won't be long until middle schoolers start to sound like sailors (and not because they're saying "ahoy").

I'm sure Eli will be exposed to some less than stellar words and phrases. And I'm sure I'll be a source of more than some of them. However, I still think it's worth it to try and keep things clean. After all, there are a lot of bad words in the world. It’d be nice to put in a good word for him.