I realized I never blogged this one: from May 30, 2007.
At the pool this afternoon, Helen was playing with Marley, the teenage girl that lives down the street (we were actually trying to get Marley to teach Alice how to swim, since I can’t get in the pool for another week, but Alice wasn’t participating). Anyway. Marley got up because the phone was for her, and Helen asked, “Where’s Marley?” I teased her that Marley had left since Helen wouldn’t go to the deep end with her, and Helen said, “Well, F***.”
In front of my mother.
With exactly the same inflection I used this morning when I dropped something on my foot in the laundry room. Helen was downstairs and out of earshot, or so I thought.
Charming.
I got up close and personal and said, “I’m sorry, what was that? What did you just say?”
She looked at me. She looked at my mother. She looked back at me… “I said… ‘duck’….?”
“Um, no, I’m pretty sure that’s not what you said.”
She looked down, said, “I’m sorry,” and gave me a hug.
I said, “That’s okay. Just be careful, OK, kiddo?” and dropped it.
Ai yi yi.
(I will admit that when it happened my instinctive reaction was one of pride that she had used the word properly and in context, and then a split-second later I was deriding myself for being proud of my not-yet-five-year-old for dropping the F-bomb.)
