In every parent's life comes that day when their darling toddlers learns certain words, some of which were perfectly acceptable in oh, say, Middle or Early English, some even used regularly by the likes of Martin Luther. But use them now, in our modern times, well certainly not.
Ah, one day, many years ago, my child began to talk like me. Expletives, and cuss words danced wittily across his young lips as if he were an old Seadog. He painted a rich canvas of peculiarly coupled yet colorful language. Which posed no real annoyance to me, until he dropped the bomb. I pondered for awhile, how I should explain to him about certain words. I pondered for too long. He reasoned it out for himself, he reasoned that if he uttered certain words to certain people he would create a bluster of fluster. An endlessly good source of rainy-day fun, or amusement when the rest of the world was dullsville. Toddlers really do like to stir things up. Some other people would say, little or nothing, which was no fun, and definitely not the response he was looking for.
Before I knew it my sweet little toddler was in Kindergarten, and then first grade, and peer pressure kicked in. And his fluidity in coarse language served him well.
He could swear like a man, though I am not at all sure he knew the nuances of his utterances. He could string words together, he was the Shakespeare of cuss words.
His exceptionally good memory was a great help to him. Most of the time he managed not to use his colorful verbosity in front of teachers. His Mother was secretly very proud of him, yes I was.
Then came that phone call. From his school. And so it was time for creative problem solving. And I hatched what I thought was a clever plan. Why not come up with something other than cuss words, say witty insults. A time honored custom, the first one I can remember hearing was "Your mother wears Army boots!". The taunting French knights in "Monthy Python's the holy Grail " inspire me to this day. Our masterpiece was "You swear like a girl", though looking at it now, that statement could be more problematic that all of the colorful oaths we were trying to avoid put together.
Oh,that I would have had this wonderful tool, adapted by some scholarly human from the works of the Bard, verily it would have made things much easier.
