Saturday, January 19, 2008

Have Sex!

Miles recently began to say "fuck" a lot. When I was eight years old, my parents did not try to get me to stop swearing. When my friends were over, and I swore in front of my mother, they were always stunned that nothing happened. But I had enough understanding of linguistic register to know that I should not swear at other people's houses, because their parents would get upset, nor did I swear in the schoolroom (though of course I swore, as all the other kids did, on the playground and at recess). So I could see trying to just ignore Miles's swearing, but for two things: first of all, Andrea does want to get him to stop, and secondly, I find it annoying, too. I am retrospectively impressed by my parents' patience with eight-year-old me.

One thing Andrea pointed out to Miles was that he did not even know what the word means. So of course he wanted to know! I figured, he's eight, he can handle it, it's time to tell him about babies and sex and all that stuff. So I told him that "fuck" is a word that is mostly used as a way of expressing intensities, or as a way to shock people, but that it also has to do with how babies are made, etc., etc. In the process, I told him that you can also say "make love" or "have sex" for this "real" meaning of the word.

So then a couple days later, Andrea said something to Miles that he was quite surprised by, and he responded, "What the have sex are you talking about?"

4 comments:

Unknown said...

That's hilarious!

Lady MacBeff said...

Agreed - that is really funny!

Dent42 said...

Reminds me of an old joke: There are young twin boys who grew up swearing like sailors. The language was once cute, but then it was obviously becoming quite exasperating. The mother mentioned this to the father, and the latter said that he would correct the problem. At dinner the first twin asked, “Hey, pop, please pass the fuckin’ potatoes.” With that, the father rose from his chair and walloped the kid. Turning to the other twin, he inquired, “And what do you want?” To this the boy nervously replied, “I don’t know what I want, but I know I don’t want those fuckin’ potatoes.”

michi said...

No kidding! Make loving awesome. :)