Motherfucking Kindergarten

I swear a lot.  All the time; conversationally, in writing, hell, I probably swear in my sleep.  It’s like tourette’s.  I’m not sure if I could stop if I tried, which is going to make teaching my daughter to speak… interesting.  I’m pretty much resigned to her just learning a ton of bad words and telling them immediately to every three year old (and their parents) she meets.  Should make for some awesome conversations at the park, or day care, or while waiting in line at the supermarket, not to mention a series of weird “double standards” conversations between me & her later at home.  “Now Emerson, I know Timmy pulled on your pigtails, but that’s no reason to tell the whole class that you hope Timmy chokes on a bucket of cocks.”

Thinking about raising my daughter usually leads to me thinking about my own upbringing, but I can’t for the life of me remember learning swear words.  I remember learning about the birds & bees, and I remember hearing a couple dirty jokes that I didn’t get, but I don’t really remember learning a bad word.  When I was in first grade, I had dinner over at the next door neighbor’s house, and their daughter (a year older than me, and really sophisticated) warned me that they’d be serving Eggplant, which she claimed “tasted like shit”.  I knew at the time what the word meant, & I’ve hated eggplant ever since, but I’m not sure when I learned the word in the first place.   I knew it was a bad word, but I can’t remember ever having a “we don’t use that word in public” conversation with my folks.  Hey - maybe they never had that conversation with me, and that’s why I swear so often.

I’ll blame my parents when Emerson’s teacher calls me to pick her up from pre-school detention.