Klowns in my Koffee

Daily Kup (And I'm Painting a Stairway to ... He-a-ven)
My son said the "F Word" in art class. It seems that shading and perspective are frustrating to an eight-year-old. Eight-year-olds who teach their classmates profanity are frustrating to parents. Looking for the meager positive, it seems that we might have scored a place on the third grade teacher's speed dial. Yeah team!

I learned that word from another little girl in elementary school as we waited to be picked up after a Girl Scout meeting. I asked my mother what it meant and she told me. My mother was always very matter-of-fact with questions like that. No obfuscation, just the facts, ma'am. My mother learned the word at her first job in her early twenties working at the New York State Department of Transportation. She came home and asked her mother what it meant. My grandmother had no idea. My mother asked a friend and then came home and explained it to her mother. That must have been an interesting conversation. My grandmother could kill chickens with her bare hands and a little knife, but wouldn't say the phrase "I bet" because gambling is a sin.

Princess Potatohead ruined her perfect school attendance by being absent today. She avoided ruining the carpeting through the use of a carefully located wastebasket handy for throwing up. She felt all too chipper by mid-morning and spent the rest of the day following me around. One of her favorite games is to pretend to be a visiting stranger; this newcomer introduces herself and then ask endless questions about her surroundings. If you are perched on top of a ladder holding a broomstick with a paint roller on the end, someone demanding to know, "Do you have pets and what are their names?" can be a distraction. I almost said the F word myself.

The house painting continues.

Just Give Me The Word
Remember in the ubiquitous holiday movie, A Christmas Story, where Raphie lets this profanity slip while helping his father change a tire? He learned the word from his father, a robust and frequent swearer. Ralphie awaits his doom, which eventually arrives in the shape of his mother who makes him sit with a bar of soap in his mouth.

In our household, I blame celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay. His shows are like traffic accidents; you should turn away but you can't quite do it. The audio tracks feature near constant bleeping since Ramsay has difficulty with the unadorned declarative sentence. Apparently, The Onion thinks so, too.




http://www.theonion.com/articles/gordon-ramsay-berates-spoon-for-45-minutes,10084/