She Takes After You!

I vaguely remember my son’s first crawl, his first steps, and the first time he said “mama.” But I really remember the first time he swore.

It was shortly after he had turned 3. He was playing with his toys in the other room, and I’m guessing he was getting frustrated because, for the zillionth time, his zoo animals weren’t fitting in his zoo truck. Suddenly I heard: “Fuck it chuck it!”

I froze.

My first thought was: Did I just hear what I think I heard? Then I wondered: Is it bad if I laugh? Because that was kind of hilarious. Finally I got around to musing: Shit, what do I do now? I surmised that he didn’t really know what he was saying—that he knew from the (of course very few!) times he had heard the F-bomb uttered by me that it was an emotive word and that he was feeling emotional and had decided to try it out. But I guessed that he didn’t know it was a bad word and that he certainly didn’t know its literal meaning. (I don’t know where the “chuck it” came from, but doesn’t it perfectly capture how you feel when you’re frustrated with an object? Fuck it chuck it indeed!)