Rhymes With Duck Race

I had totally intended to have this post up on Wednesday, but my internet went out on Tuesday. Two days without internet - I nearly died. Today, when I reached rock bottom, I could be found at my children's school trying desperately to hack into their WiFi network; which, despite my mad skillz, I was unable to achieve.

I often read stories, or in the case of my sister in law, HEAR stories about children who say inappropriate things in inappropriate situations. They do this because they are children. It's what they do. They haven't yet learned tact. They will learn, although some unfortunate souls never do (is it unfortunate for them or for those of us who have to deal with them? Like the lady at a party the other day who turned to me and loudly announced that another woman at the party had "no tits").

Me? I am blessed by living in a country where 99% of the people speak a language different than the one my family speaks. Therefore, I am usually spared most of those mortifingly embarrassing moments. However, my Polish is horrifically embarrassing, so there's no need to feel like I'm missing out on embarrassment.

Anyway, a few days ago, I was walking through one of the largest malls in Warsaw, while Piglet and Pooh Bear were entertaining each other with the rhyming game. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the rhyming game it's a maddening game where a word or phrase is repeated incessantly and then, because their mother/father/nanny/sister has not been driven to the brink of insanity yet, they think of words or phrases that rhyme with it.

That particular day's phrase was "duck race". I think they came up with it because they are 4 and 6.

So, there are many, many interesting things that rhyme with duck race, but I think you know which one caught my attention.

So I stepped in.

"Please don't say that word. It's not a nice word in English." And yes, I really do specifiy which language when speaking to my children.

Pooh: "What's not a nice word? F*ck face?"

Me: "Yes. That word is not nice."

Pooh: "So I shouldn't say f*ck face?"

Me: "No."

Pooh: "Why is f*ck face not a nice word?"

At that point I was fairly convinced that he was just screwing with me. And he's 4!

Me: "I don't know exactly. Someone a long time ago decided it was a bad word. It's culturally accepted to be a bad word and therefore we shouldn't say it."

Pooh: "Okay. I'll stop saying f*ck face."

Yes. I am truly, truly grateful that most people did not understand a gosh darned word that kid said.