Monday Morning Smile: Installment 1

With five children you can imagine that we have quite a collection of incidents that we look back on and giggle about. I thought that I would share one of these with you this morning because... well, because it's Monday, and everyone needs something to smile about on a Monday, right?

Riley (11 now) was five at the time and in Kindergarten. I had picked him up from school, and we had headed to the mall. I can't remember the reason for the trip to the mall, but does a woman really NEED a reason?

I was walking through Dillards pushing Owen in the stroller with Riley straggling along just behind us. He hurried to catch up with me, tapped me on the arm and said, "Mom. What does F*#k mean? Of course, he actually said the word... loud and clear, for all the other shoppers to hear. I don't think it could possibly have shocked them more than it did me, though.

I stopped dead, telling myself NOT to freak out. Of course, in my head I'm running through the possible places he could have heard this word. Not at home. I'm not really a cusser. Zack doesn't use that word either. His language might get a bit more colorful than mine, particularly when a home improvement project isn't going quite the way he had planned (when DOES it EVER go the way he had planned?). But never that word. My dad always had a very colorful vocabulary and, although he really did try to be careful around the kids, the occasional word would slip out. I had it narrowed down to either my dad or some kid at school. Of course I was already making judgements about the mystery child, formulating a plan to go to the teacher about this kid who was obviously a VERY bad influence on MY child (or give my dad a piece of my mind).

I pulled Riley aside and we sat down on a nearby mannequin platform. I wasn't about to tell him what that word means. He was five. That would have been WAY too much information, but I didn't want him to think he was in trouble either. So I very calmly said, "That is a very ugly word that we don't use". Then, "Where did you hear that word?" He replied, "Our letter at school this week is 'F'." (Now I'm thinking. Great. The letter is 'F'. So some kid says, 'I know an 'F' word'!) I just waited for Riley to finish his story, though. He continued with, "Well, we always rhyme everyone's name with the letter. Like today they said, 'Filey' for my name. But when we got to Chuck, Mrs. Frase said we couldn't use 'Chuck'. We had to use Charles. That's his real name".

Ahhhhhh! So he had taken what his teacher said, and concluded that if you put an 'F' on the front of Chuck's name, you get a word that you're not supposed to say. So I didn't have to march in and have a visit with the teacher, and I didn't have to call my dad with a reminder to clean it up around the kids. I just had a little smarty pants on my hands, and THAT I could handle... most days, anyway.