KIDS SAY THE DAMNDEST THINGS

She Who Must Be Obeyed had reminded me a couple of days ago about this little story, which she left as a comment on one of MetroDad’s posts.

By way of background, the post had to do with the remarkable ability of children to absorb every single Vile Expostulation they hear from a parent’s mouth. Since all many some of us occasionally give vent to foul words from time to time, this can become a real issue when you’re trying to raise kids that can carry on a conversation without lobbing in a fuckbomb every other word.

And SWMBO’s story is a classic. So in case you haven’t seen it before...

Back when we were living in Houston, She Who Must Be Obeyed taught sixth grade at a private school for children with Learning Differences: dyslexia, that sort of thing. One year, she had a student with an Outsize Personality (as she puts it)...and the student’s mother had an Outsize Personality to match. Seems the kid’s great-uncle had been a notorious Central American dictator; the other family members evidently had some of the same traits in common.

One day, SWMBO was having a conversation with the mother, who shared a little story about her son: Momma had been waiting for her son to come home on the school bus, but when the bus arrived, the driver got off - not Sonny-Boy. Trouble.

So Momma goes up to the driver and asks, “What did the little asshole do now?”

Whereupon the driver dropped his head and said, “He said ‘asshole.’”