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Swearing. I’m sure all parents try their best. But sometimes it just slips out. I remember quite vividly two occasions when I was little that I swore. Once in primary school, year one. I remember telling the teacher to F off, to which I was promptly marched to the head teachers office where I was shouted at so loudly and so aggressively that I imagine were it to happen now, there would be a school board meeting to decide the future employment of said headmaster. Incidentally, that same head teacher seemed to hate the way I held pens and pencils. They would routinely visit classes and tap my hands with a ruler or force me to hold it in a way I wasn’t comfortable with. It never bothered me. As soon as they left I’d just go back to my way and get on with it, so ha! Vive la résistance!
The second time was when I dropped the F bomb to my mum…. Well her response was a little bit different than the head masters, let’s just say I’m intimately aware of the taste of fairy soap.
As an adult, I’m a bit of a contextual swearer. What I mean is, it depends who i’m with. I spend a lot of my work life on building sites, which can have its own language. Particularly airing on the side of fruity. Whilst at home, I try my best to keep it clean.
Now here’s T. My toddler. The walking, talking, information sponge. I promised him he could look at the rabbits in the pet shop, but we were a bit early, so we spent some time doing the ever enjoyable routine of touching rugs in the carpet shop. Very entertaining. I happened to find a particularly cheap and nasty one, to which without even thinking, told my wife that I thought it was ‘crap’….. oh crap….. Queue T, at the top of his lungs, exclaiming to the whole store how daddy thinks the carpets are crap….CRAP! CRAP! CRAP! I think I managed to save it by repeating crab after each time until he started saying crab himself. I told him that I saw some carpet crabs…. I’m sure I was very believable…. Bet this won’t come back to haunt me.
But still not as bad as one of the nursery girls accidentally dropping a hard C at drop off. That was hilarious.
