{"id":579,"date":"2012-04-27T00:34:18","date_gmt":"2012-04-27T00:34:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.laurafulton.org\/?p=579"},"modified":"2022-04-04T07:39:46","modified_gmt":"2022-04-04T07:39:46","slug":"dirty-words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.laurafulton.org\/?p=579","title":{"rendered":"Dirty Words"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>In the same way that very small children sometimes say the most offensive words with the purest intentions, there are also times when kids say completely innocent words in such a way as to render them profane.<\/p>\n

When I was maybe five or six, my mom (who was an amazingly talented seamstress) made herself an \u00fcber-sexy red string bikini \u2013 she was also exceedingly hot for a mother of three and wholly able to rock the look, even if it never went further than our private back yard.<\/p>\n

Wanting to give her a compliment, I decided to try out a word I\u2019d heard on TV. I didn\u2019t know what the word meant exactly, but the inflection with which the actor had said it indicated to me that it must mean \u2018attractive\u2019 or \u2018alluring\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cOoo, Mommy!\u201d I crooned. \u201cTa-a-a-cky!\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to not knowing the word\u2019s definition, I also didn\u2019t grasp sarcasm or verbal irony, either. My mother was (understandably) enormously offended by my \u2018compliment\u2019 for no reason that made sense to me.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a common enough mistake, especially among young children. My little sister Rachel was forbidden from using the word \u2018idiot\u2019 when she was little because she used it so expansively \u2013 and accurately.<\/p>\n

And then there was the little boy I taught for one day when I was a substitute teacher at a nursery school. During recess, he came running up to the supervising teachers, affronted to the point of tears.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat girl called me a bad word!\u201d he wailed. Concerned that we were going to have to broach the topic of profane language in a class of three year olds, we asked him what word the odious girl had said.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe called me … pantyhose!\u201d<\/p>\n

We were able to clarify that he understood pantyhose to be \u2018those long socks big girls wear on their legs\u2019 but the tone in which the insult had been spoken was damaging enough.<\/p>\n

This hurtful tone is exactly the reason why I\u2019m currently faced with having to teach my oldest son not to insult his brothers with a word that would \u2013 under any other circumstance \u2013 be considered a compliment. Probably repeating something he heard on TV, my son turned to his younger brother in the car this afternoon and said, \u201cGive me back my car, genius!\u201d<\/p>\n

I can only assume that he heard the word used in a moment of sarcasm. My son\u00a0clearly doesn\u2019t know what a genius is, but he certainly means it badly.<\/p>\n

All things considered, though, I suppose if my boy is going to go around calling his brother names in anger, he could do a lot worse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the same way that very small children sometimes say the most offensive words with the purest intentions, there are also times when kids say completely innocent words in such a way as to render them profane. When I was … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[185,184],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurafulton.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurafulton.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurafulton.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurafulton.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurafulton.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=579"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurafulton.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1289,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurafulton.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579\/revisions\/1289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurafulton.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurafulton.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurafulton.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}