It is not an uncommon turn of phrase in our house to refer to someone as a dumbass, when it's appropriate. I think that's going to have to stop. This morning on arrival at day care, I was told that after several days of pondering, our DCP has finally determined that no, Noah was not calling his buddy Jonathan "Thomas" for some inscrutible reason -- he was calling him a dumbass.
Now, she had to acknowledge that his use of the word and his delivery were perfect. It was always when Jonathan was doing something that Noah didn't like and he was "instructing" him to do something differently, and his intonation was perfect. And yet -- this is bad, and it's got to stop.
Because it came up in the context of something else incomprehensible that Noah's been doing that I was able to shed light on today. He breaks into this little song sometimes, and I finally was able to place it: he was singing Ricky Martin's "Shake your Bon Bon." In one of his movies, some character sings about 2 lines of it, and that's Noah's entire exposure to the song. Here comes the hysterically charming part: he doesn't know the words, so what he's singing is this:
Chicken - BAWK BAWK!
Now he has all 4 boys at day care singing it too.
Other things that we're trying to discontinue include absolutely perfect use of the name of a large segment of our society's savior in vain, and impersonation of an Asian comic. Let me explain.
My beloved husband (SphericalFrictionlessBull?) has an Asian friend who self-parodies when he's said something silly by taking on an exaggerated Chinese accent and saying "You funny, AAAH!" SFBull found this funny and started doing it too. Okay, Jewish American using mock Asian accent strikes me as a little inappropriate for reasons I can't seem to properly express to him, and he persists in doing it, and encouraging Noah to do it. I persist in trying to stop Noah from doing it. Most of the time, at least in my presence, he doesn't add the "AHH!" part, and so I'm okay with that. I'm just praying that he's not setting our little boy up for an Asian gang ass-whoopin' later in life.
Second story: Last week one night, I'm guessing the dog sat down next to Noah and farted. And he responded just exactly the same way that I would -- with a hearty "Oh, JESUS, Lucy!" You know, for us, it's not taking the Lord's name in vain or anything -- I don't think too terribly much about it if I let an "Oh Jesus" escape my lips in frustration. I'll admit -- I've laughed at the occasional "Oh Jesus" from my toddler, too. It seems so adult on him.
But when I saw it from our (oh, egad) delightful and Christian day care provider's eyes as we talked this morning, I realized that it was clearly something we need to put an end to, to be appropriately respectful of her, and you know, the hundreds of Christian friends we have.
And of course this is the perfect time to mention that before he could say Ls with any allacrity, Noah would occasionally address his "flock" (a la Wiley T Sheep from Jakers!), and sound like he was uttering the dreaded F-word....
So, to summarize, clearly I need to maintain the following....
LIST OF FORBIDDEN UTTERANCES
- Oh Crap! - primarily uttered by SS14
- Dumbass! - primarily uttered by SphericalFrictionlessCow and Bull
- Oh, Jesus! - ditto
- The dreaded F-word, or anything that sounds like it
- Any song by Ricky Martin, unless rewritten to refer to barnyard foul
I'm sure the list will continue to grow.
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