Please note that I make reference to bad language in this post. If you’re easily offended you may want to give it a miss. Instead you’ll find some great weekend reading by following the link… Forty Days and Forty Nights
Yeah, you heard me. I called you fuggers and I hope you’re laughing. You should be because ‘fuggers’ is a very funny word.
It seems my eldest daughter (3 years) might well have the vocabulary of a salty old docker. I make no judgement about dockworkers here. I’ve never met a single one. I have nothing against them and I certainly don’t believe myself to be any better than any one of them but I am given to believe the air in the dockyards is visibly blue.
Photo: utkusarioz
I was in our bathroom one evening this week, with all four young ones crammed into the bath. There’s still just about enough room for one more child, but a visit earlier this year to the doctor with the rusty bread knife and the gift of getting straight men to shave their ball bags put paid to that.
Thoughts of that torturous half an hour aside… the bath is a cramped environment and the children were fussing and fighting for space… while I sat on the toilet reading my newspaper. And that’s all I was doing, before your mind begins to wander.
The next thing I hear, in amongst the splashing of the water and the sound of thrashing limbs, is the normally little voice of my three-year-old girl bellowing, “HEY, YOU FUGGERS!”
She was directing her rage at her older brothers who were busy trying to throttle one another from opposite ends of the bathtub.
The boys immediately stopped what they were doing because they recognised the word – even though she’d mispronounced it – and they were waiting to see my reaction.
I was still behind the newspaper but I’d stopped reading. I was instead biting my lip trying not to laugh. I was going to pretend that I hadn’t heard it and let it all wash over.
Oh no. There was no chance of that happening. I felt a little chuckle rise up from my belly which I tried to stifle by pretending it was a cough.
I thought for a brief moment I’d got away with it – except now my shoulders had started to rock as I struggled to control the huge guffaw about to erupt over my larynx.
The boys saw my shoulders rocking behind the newspaper and started to titter – and that was it, I couldn’t hold it in any longer.
Bwaaaaaaaaa hahahahahahaha. Hooooo hoooo hohohoho Heeeee heee heee hehehehe ooooo ooooo aaaaaaaahhhhhhhh HAAAAAHAHAHAHA aaaaaaaaa.
For the next few minutes I rolled about still perched on the bog laughing myself into a stupor and all four of my kids joined in. The youngest just laughed with me as the other three delighted in shouting, “Fuggers, fuggers, fuggers, hey you fuggers.”
There were tears rolling down my face and I couldn’t stop grinning as I struggled to explain why saying ‘fuggers’ is not funny and mustn’t happen.
Oh it was a wonderful moment and one that will stay with me until I give my speech on my daughters wedding day in about 30 or 40 years from now.
I confess. My children hear me swear from time to time. They never hear my wife swear though. No. Never from her.
As you can probably tell, I don’t get my panties all in a bunch if I hear my kids using that sort of language.
It’s not that I want them using it, but – I’d rather they heard that kind of language from me. I know that sounds silly but I know they’ll immediately repeat it back to me and at least then I have some influence over teaching them the rights and wrongs of its usage. In addition they get desensitised to it and quickly become bored with it when it doesn’t get a reaction anymore.
And if you think your kids won’t hear this kind of language at school you’re probably deluding yourself. I’m here to tell you I heard the worst words when I was just FIVE and I haven’t learnt any new ones since.
What naughty things have your children said? And even better – where were you when they embarrassed you?
Sensitivity Note: I’d be grateful if you could deliberately misspell the worst words or maybe type them backwards. 
Thanks for a great week. I’ll post again on Monday.
Dave.
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