One of Izzy's favourite things is to play in my car. I suppose a lot of kids do, I did. We had a big blue Buick station wagon with black and blue shag carpet in the back of it. I would play with my toys in there for hours, with the windows down, just soaking up the warmth of the sun streaming in through the windows. Until I got a nasty sunburn across the back of my legs and realized it was not such a good idea lying in a carpeted magnifying glass in the middle of the summer.
Izzy doesn't play in my car, her world has invaded it. I was cutting the lawn and she asked,
"Hey buddy, need a lift?" she asked. "Hey where are you going? I haven't got all day..."
"Umm, the airport..." I fumbled.
She cranked the wheel back and forth a couple of times and said, "Here you go. That'll be four hundred bucks."
I paid her the imaginary money and got out. She made noise like a car peeling out and I went back to cutting the lawn. A little while later I saw her slam my car door two or three time in a row, muttering to herself and making grand, angry hand gestures. She then made her way to the front porch and stood there, glaring at my car. I knew something was obviously wrong so I walked to her to see what the problem was.
"What's the matter?" I asked.
"I took somebody else to the airport and they ran out without paying me!" She bellowed.
OK I thought, I'll play along. "Well honey four hundred bucks for a ride to the airport IS a bit much. If you hope to stay competitive and not get stiffed, maybe you should think about lowering your rates."
There was a beat or two of a tense silence between us until she finally hollered,
"Daddy, it's just pretend. Can you please just go in the house now?"
Profanity is a funny thing. It's a part of language that "polite" society turns it's nose up at on the surface but it is used by so many people every day, that it has really become part of the lexicon of verbal communication. It is no wonder that when people are learning to speak the language, they tend to learn the sweary bits first. If I pressed, I can say the seven dirty words in five or six different languages. With that in mind...
Izzy and I were out driving and there was a cyclist in front of us who was meandering back and forth between the shoulder of the road and the middle of the road. Oblivious to the growing line of traffic behind him, he never moved to one position long enough for anyone to pass him. To my own credit, I muttered many things under my breath but never actually made any audible remarks to the situation.
"Get the shit outta the way, you god-damned, dirty long hair!" came bellowing from the backseat.
Now I'd like to say in my own defense that at no time have I ever actually used those particular words in that particular order. Maybe she learned it from her mother. My immediate reaction was actually pride. She had strung the phrase together masterfully. I learned early on that if you make a big reaction to these moments, you give the words power, you make them forbidden fruit of a kind and those words have far more power than they need already.
For as uptight as I can be about everything, swearing really doesn't bother me. I tend to take my grandmother's view of bad language. She wasn't a fan and thought it made you seem uneducated but if you insisted on using it she said you should dress it up a little and show people that you had a brain in your head. "Fuck me swinging" was one of her personal favourites if I remember correctly.They are just words. Unfortunately, most of the rest of the world does not share my liberal view of these things...With the Isobel's scholastic debut looming, can a phone call from Mrs. Axelrod about Izzy's telling the other children, "The stuffed cat has shit on the floor of the toy room and nobody is playing with a thing until we get the god-damned smell out of the room," really be too far away?
I look forward to the time we'll get to spend together after her first suspension...
It is always interesting what makes it to school - Josie's report cards come home with notes like "Josephine always has personal anecdotes to relate to what we're learning." Which means, when they were talking about asking others to be quiet, Josie chimed in with "Or you could say, 'If I wanted to hear from an asshole, I'd fart.'" and I knew EXACTLY where that came from.
ReplyDeleteLOL outstanding!!! LOL got to aske is the pic at the bottom her "Look you old fart put on sponge bob before I wreck you". look
ReplyDeleteHey Sid, our family runs a taxi company up in Goderich. Tell Izzy she has a job with up when she is 25. She probably wouldn't even need any training!!!
ReplyDelete