The bad A-word

"I know the bad A-word now," Saskia said solemnly as I drove her to school.

"You do?" I asked, surprised. That's one she wouldn't have learned from me. "Who did you learn it from?"

"Daniel said it to another boy at school. He got in trouble for it."

Daniel is the last boy in her class I would expect to have a potty mouth, so I probed further. "Is the second letter of the A-word an S?"

"Nope! It's an N."

I thought for a minute and couldn't come up with a single bad A-word with N as the second letter. "Spell it for me," I suggested, not wanting Leif and Ariana to be privy to the profanity.

"A - N - O - Y - I - N - G," Saskia carefully spelled out.

"Annoying?" I repeated, confused.

Saskia did a horrified gasp. "You said the word! My teacher told us there are some names you should never call other people, and that's one of them."

Comments

[Beverly]

I love it. When my son was in kindergarten, on the way upstairs to go to bed one night, he said to me, "So&So said the f word on the playground today." I wasn't quite ready for him to know these words. I asked him, "David, what was it?" "Fart," he replied.

While I don't care for that word either, I was somewhat relieved.

I taught first grade for a long time, and early on, when a student came to me and said that someone had said a bad word, I would get all over the person who reportedly had said it. One day I asked the tattler what the person had said. "Butt" was the reply. I learned not to jump to conclusions too quickly.

[StitchingSurgeon]

I love it! How funny!

[slydi]

tee hee.

[Amy H.]

LOL! If only they could stay that innocent...

[T.]

LOVE this post and totally LOVE your blog!

[angela]

Ahhhh the innocence.....gotta love it!

[Sara]

I remember once being told off by a kid I was babysitting for having jokingly told her older brother "oh, shut up". I found out then that that phrase was considered naughty words in their household.

[pedriatric ENT]

Its important to be careful with our words,especially when kids are around.

-Kaylee