Things you learn on the bus cannot be taught in the classroom of academia, but only in the classroom of life.
It is rumored that I was a verbal child in my developmental years. I can only thank my brother for that. He is the kind of kid who loved me and yet made sure I would do things, and better, say things to drive my parents crazy.
I can honestly blame my sailor mouth on my brother. I take complete responsability now in how I talk and when I use "sentence enhancers" which really isn't often, just in perilous situations, or out of sheer frustration. But John, he was the one who claimed he got it from the "bus and summer fun day camp." It all has to start somewhere. Very needless to say, I would repeat whatever he said to me and I made my parents cringe repeatedly by the "string of sentence enhancers" that would escape my mouth, especially at an early age.
With that being said, Owen fired one off tonight that nealy left me breathless and in complete shock. He proceeds to tell a story about a girl who has a special "notebook." And in that notebook are written all kinds of things. He is telling me this story, while I am playing a mindless game on my Kindle, "There's words like, butt face, and bugers and FUDGE! (Only it wasn't fudge. It was that other word.) What The? "Excuse me?" And then I made deadly eye contact with him. The kind of eye contact that made him sink below eye level into the tub. I proceeded to mouth all kinds of completely deadly threats if he ever used that word again. Mind you, he is in the bath with Jack while he is telling me this whole story. And then there is Max sitting by desperately trying to understand which word made my blood curdle, "Mom what was the word? What's going on, did he say Buck? Is that a bad word?"
Believe it or not, I didn't tell Max to shut up. BUT, I did tell Owen that that was the worst of the worst words. The mother of all cuss words. We don't ever say it. I am still mouthing this, barely above audible levels. Jack had his back to me and didn't know anything was awry, therefore, he did NOT repeat THE WORD to end all words. Phew.
No harm, no foul. I did have to wonder, "Owen, where was this notebook? Was it at school at recess? (another hot zone for learning too much unsupervised)"
"No, the girl was on the bus and she was showing my friends and I happened to look over and see all the words she had written in her book." BINGO. The Bus, great education happens there.
I wanted to call this girls mother, her mother's mother, and make them all wear a
great big scarlet letter F for Gutter-talking-scabby-little-stink-wad girl (none of those words had an "f" in them, I know this). But then I got a grip and realized something. I can't shelter this child forever. And I can't be there to make sure he doesn't hear the bad stuff. In fact, I if he hears the bad stuff, I want to konw about it so I can chat with him about it and let him where I stand on it all. He's going to hear it no matter what. So I thought it was better just to tell him, "Oboe, we don't use bad language no matter where it is written. It's just not what we do. Please make good choices and choose not to say bad words. Agreed?"
He looked so stunned and a little like a deer in the headlights, he barely nodded his head in agreement.
Anyone want to want another episode of Sponge Bob and Sailor Talk with us?
Thankfully, I haven't heard it since then.
Now, if I could just get Jackson to quit repeating everything his brothers say like "momma jokes" and various Katy Perri songs.
