The Darndest Things: Language Paranoia

As I've mentioned, many of my friends are now with kid (or with multiple kids), and those kids are the subject of some pretty funny stories, more often than not by virtue of the things that come out of untrained mouths. This is probably my second-favorite, of which I was reminded by Lisa's post about watching her mouth.

My friend and former coworker S and her husband have two boys (and now a cute little baby girl, congrats to them), the older of whom was in the early stages of stringing sentences together. As such, they were trying very hard to monitor their language, for fear of the kid picking up some unfortunate habits (which he did, at one point absorbing both the pronunciation and use of "Dammit," much to the amused chagrin of his parents as they saw the child bump his head against his crib and let fly with a diminutive "Dammit!"). But small slips aside, they had done very well.

Or so they thought.

Fast forward a bit to a family trip out and about, with the whole crew sitting at a traffic light. Husband is driving, S riding shotgun, kids strapped in in the back seat. All normal, until the older child's voice cuts through the silence.

"Mommy," he says, "that's a dumbfuck!"

S just about passes out, as you can imagine.

She looks at husband, agog. Husband looks at her, same. And exchange follows, mostly whisper-shouted,

"Did you...?"
"I didn't!"
"Well I certainly didn't...!"
"Well then where the...?!?"

For about ten very long seconds. All the while S is borderline frantic trying to figure out where on Earth their child had heard that kind of language.

Fortunately for her (and her sanity), the source of the problem becomes clear, and she gently corrects her little boy.

"No, no, honey, it's pronounced Dump. Truck."

And then she could breathe again.