A Touching Family Story About Our Five-Year Old Daughter (Warning: Profanity)
I’m unwilling to take a chance on a movie unless I know it will be good. I can fritter away hours on the computer — but if I see a bad movie, I feel like it’s two hours of my life that I’ll never get back. So it often happens that my wife watches videos downstairs while I’m up in the loft on the computer.
One afternoon, Christi had put on Spike Lee’s “Summer of Sam.” Our daughter Lauren, who is five, came down from her bedroom, where she had been playing. As Lauren walked down the stairs, I heard a steady stream of profanity coming from the T.V. “Uh, Christi?” I said. “Lauren’s coming down. You might want to pause that or something.”
I heard Christi tell Lauren: “You should probably go back to your room, honey.”
Lauren asked: “Can I watch the movie?”
I heard more profanity. Christi told Lauren: “You should go back up to your room. This really isn’t a movie for kids to watch.”
“Why is it not a movie for kids?” Lauren asked. I could hear that she had made it all the way downstairs, right next to the television set.
“Because they say bad words,” Christi said.
On cue, a character named Vinny yelled at his wife, very loudly and very distinctly:
I CAN’T BE A WHORE, ‘CAUSE I’M A MAN, OKAY? YOU’RE THE FUCKING WHORE, YOU STUPID LESBIAN FUCKING WHORE!!!
Lauren’s eyes went wide.
“Oh,” she said. She nodded to show that she understood.
“He said STUPID.”
That’s a great story. In that flurry of bad words, the only one Lauren recognized as a bad word(“stupid”) became the reason and justification in her mind for the prohibition against watching the film. It’s a credit to your family that the only bad word she identified was”stupid”. When my friend’s 5 yr old accidentally watched part of a Jerry Springer show before she turned it off, the kid asked why couldn’t she watch it? My friend responded that the show had bad people on it. Her kid responded that sometimes bad people say things good people don’t understand.
Roberta (6bd598) — 8/7/2005 @ 1:01 amI remember when I was 8 going to see “Patton” with my dad. He wasn’t real keen on taking me because of the rough language. My mom said,he wont’t hear anything he hasn’t heard you say. In 1970 cursing was still glamourous, the only people I saw do it were tough highschool kids or my dads Navy pilot friends, and rarely a tough chick. Heutzutage I see little 90 lb yuppy housewives yell at their kids with a stream of epithets that would make a Hells Angel blush.
Frank Drackman (6065f1) — 8/7/2005 @ 5:19 amGreat story! Now that I’m a grandma I’m collecting and blogging even more stories that I tag “adventures in parenting” … on dirty words I offer this about my daughter Erin (who had quite the mouth as a little one) who is mom to twin boys (Sean & Nikolas) just shy of their 3rd birthday:
Sunday Eric and I entertained the boys for a few hours in the afternoon. Erin came by to pick them up and we spent a bit of time gathering up all the stuff she packs and carries whenever they go out. The one thing the boys love to do as soon as they get into our house is shed their shoes and socks (and recently, when you aren’t looking, Sean is shedding his clothes..but that’s another story). Erin is sitting on the couch chatting with me as she automatically is putting back on their shoes and socks. Sean picks up one of his shoes to hand to her, looks at the bottom, then holds it up to his mom to say “Mom, mom. Ewwww. Icky.” Erin snags the shoe from him, studying a mess embedded in the sole of his shoe. Her brow is furrowed and she takes a cautious sniff and then looks up annoyed, “Don’t tell me he stepped in dog shit!”
You’d have thought someone handed Sean an ice cream cone. His eyes twinkled, a large smile spread across his little face bracketed by dimples.
“Dog chit!” he exclaimed as he started running through the house, “Dog chit! Dog chit! Dog chit!”
The look on Erin’s face was priceless and it took all I had not to fall on the floor in laughter.
Proof positive of a humorous God Who listens to moms when they say “I hope you have children just like you!”
Darleen (f20213) — 8/7/2005 @ 10:34 amGod bless the innocence of children
Jeff (4c3c19) — 8/7/2005 @ 10:38 amHaha, that’s a great story.
Leigh (6ad34a) — 8/7/2005 @ 3:23 pmGreat. At 5 you kid is still out of the loop on what the MSM considers “real” language. Do *not* send her to a pubic school if you wnat to keep her out of the loop; and I am sure you do. I would and did. Now I worry about grandkids, at least 2 of which will *not* go to public schools.
Rod Stanton (7320bc) — 8/7/2005 @ 5:25 pmOne time camping – we had bought a trailer of sorts for a while – I tried to get out the front door and being of the tall and gangly sort cracked my skull on the doorframe.
“Aargh, Cocksucker!” I yelled in distress. Yes, a mistake, and certainly not my my normal discourse, pain notwithstanding.
“Cocksucker,” replied my 3-yr old. Oh, please, no.
“No, sweetie,” I said, “Daddy conked his head.” I have no idea where my reply came from.
“Conked,” she said. And luckily it stuck.
Last break I ever got from my daughter (she’s 15 now – that’s another story, sigh).
But it worked!
ras (f9de13) — 8/8/2005 @ 2:18 amIn the parlance of an AOL chatroom – ROFLMAO
bureaucrat (825e78) — 8/25/2005 @ 12:34 amThat is an amusing story. I think even in todays society we underestimate children.
I wish you adn your daughter Lauren all the best for 2006.
betting tipster (f852e2) — 1/7/2006 @ 4:09 am