my dad was an auto mechanic, and years ago he did shadetree work for family members and other acquaintances. When I was little, I must have overheard him cussing out something he was working on, because later that day my mom found me searching through the toy box muttering “sumnerbits. sumnerbits!”
Not terribly little, but a Japanese friend heard us cursing in the vernacular of the eighties: if something was distasteful, we’d roll our eyes and say ‘Fuck that noise.’
Norimasa wanted to add that to his vocabulary, so one day, sensing the time was right to trot that one out, said “Fuck that sound!” We thought it was adorable.
Just yesterday I was walking past a room and my 4 year old said to my infant – “Aww, don’t be afraid little pussy.” I stopped dead in my tracks, until I heard her say “You’re a sweet little pussycat.” Apparently she was playing cats. To my knowledge, she’s never heard me call anyone a pussy, but I’m still keeping my fingers crossed that it was a fluke.
My dad was always a colorful driver. The veins on his forehead would stick out. You could see the muscles in his jaw working as he ground his teeth. And he always offered helpful advise to other motorists.
This was before my time but the story was often repeated. They were driving off somewhere with the family, at that time including mom, dad, and two older sisters. They were probably 4 and 2 at the time.
Somebody cut dad off or some such and he let fly with a blue stream of prose. After a moment, out of the back seat came a little voice, my sister, pointing out the window saying, “That’s a son-of-a-bitch, daddy said.” as only a cherubic 2-year-old can.
I hesitate to hijack my own thread, but some of the responses have forced me to think of Little Johnny jokes and other such threads.
If you have some special favorite threads of a similar nature, links to them would be fine as far as I’m concerned.
One of my favorites of the genre is about the little boy burning ants with a magnifying glass when the priest walks by.
Anybody remember that one?
On a similar note, my niece’s favorite movie when she was just learning to talk was “The Fox and the Hound”. She couldn’t quite say that, so what came out was pretty close to “fuckin’ hound”. We all got a few laughs out of that.
When a nephew of mine was young, my sister heard him utter a four-letter word. She told him that it was not a good word to say.
The kid countered with: “But Daddy says it”
To which my sister told him: “Yes, but Daddy is grown up”.
He though about that for a few seconds and came back with: “When I’m grown up, I’m gonna say it too”.
I’ve probably told this before, but a co-worker of mine had an absolutely angelic looking daughter at potty-training age. He said one evening he told her it was bedtime soon, time to use the potty. “No, I don’t have to use the potty.” “Yes, it’s time for bed now, and we have to use the potty before bed.” “I don’ hafta use the potty!” <repeat of gentle encouragement> “I don’t hafta use the FUCKIN’ potty!”
The closest I have is when I went to daycare to pick up my daughter- she was about five- and she would NEVER swear, even on the few occasions when I would try to get her to repeat song lyrics or something…
So I am walking up behind her in the church, when a little boy took something away from her friend where they were playing- she stood up, getting all up in his face, and, facing away from me, said, “Give it back, you little bitch!”
The look on her face when she turned around and saw me was soooo scared, but I thought it was funny as hell, although I tried not to let her see it…
The little boy was mortified, as with me there, he obviously couldn’t react back much…
I haven’t ever heard her curse again… Matter of fact, until last year, she still said ‘head’ instead of ‘butt’- so if she wanted to call you a ‘butt-head’ she would call you a ‘head-head’…
When I was about 3 years old, the toilet clogged up (not my doing) and it looked pretty nasty. Apparently I took one look at that toilet and said, “Shit!”
My niece used to say fucksadaisy, I think it was her own construction.
That reminds me of an anecdote related by someone who worked for a Sony branch in the US. His boss picked up slang from the American office guys and used it, sometimes with hilarious results. When he picked up the then-new “sucks” term, he slightly mangled it. As in; “My computer is the suck,” or “Today is having the suck.”
I’m afraid your best friend’s sister is an old joke.
Now that I’ve been a buzzkill, I’ll share my coworker’s story. She works with a group of struggling readers, and often does an onset-rime activity (give kids a bunch of word beginnings and a bunch of word endings and have them put them together to make real words). More than once, she told me yesterday, she’s had a kid pull the “F” onset and the “-uck” rime and put them together, and she’s had to take them away quickly and say, “Those don’t make a real word, honey, try again.” Fortunately they’re not quick readers and they’re not doing it on purpose.
There’s a restaurant chain in Canada and Buffalo called Jack Astor’s. After we took JP to a birthday dinner there, his grandparents called, and his little sister L answered. She happily told them, “We just went to dinner at Jack Asshole’s!”
This was just a couple of nights ago…
It was bedtime for my 3-year-old, and time to put away the magnet rods she was playing with (like the ones from Geomag, Magnetix, etc.).
She got them all stuck together in a bundle, they way she likes, and when I put them in the little tin box she keeps them in, they stuck to the box and the little steel balls and messed up her configuration.
She scolded me and said I did it wrong. I asked it she’d like me to put the rods and “marbles” in separate boxes.
My sweet little baby girl looked so forlornly at her jumbled up magnets and sighed, “Yeah. It’s just fucking sad.”
I said, “Oh. I’m sorry you’re sad, but you know you’re not supposed to say ‘fucking,’ right?”
“Yeah,” she said, still hanging her head, “It’s just…it’s just crap sad.”
Driving my son to daycare down the same road for years I guess he got a little too used to me yelling at the traffic. He got so used to it that whenever he felt the car stop moving even at a traffic light he would yell from the back seat “Move it you damn cars!”
I also remember babysitting my niece who sang Santa Clause is Coming to Town with a cheerful smile. That is until she got to the last line of the song which she forgot and resorted to a line undoubtedly heard from her mother.
(smiling) he knows when you are sleeping, he knows when you’re awake, he knows when you’ve been bad or good… (scowlling) SO BE GOOD GODDAMMIT!
mid-1970’s, I was maybe 6 years old. My brother would have been 12 or 13. One summer day, he was looking for me.
From the kitchen, he shouted out my name.
From the bathroom, I yelled “what?”
“Where are you?”
“I’m taking a shit!”
I’m told my brother got real nervous just then, because he knew that our mom - who was in the kitchen with him, and had heard the entire exchange - would realize that he was the one that had taught me that word.
When I was a little kid, I wouldn’t curse, even when people tried to get me to repeat things. (I made up for it later.)
I was 4 or so years old and in the car with my mom. We were headed down the highway, listening to the radio, when mom said “Goddamn it!” out loud. We hadn’t been talking, so it sort of came out of nowhere, and I didn’t know why she said it.
“God damn what, Mommy?” I asked. And then I realized what I’d said, and burst into tears.
My mom laughing at me for the next two minutes didn’t help.
Wonder what the “sparkling wiggles” kid is up to these days.
When the oldest Janis Nevvy was wee, and not saying very many words, his mother had put him back into bed about three times, and the last time admonished him “If I see you out of bed again, I’m going to spank you.” She then left the room, and came back a few minutes later, to find him out of bed, with one leg thrown over the baby gate, getting ready to hike the other leg over. He looked up at his mother, realized he’d been caught, and with perfect clarity said “Oh shit.”