Enriching one’s vocabulary the hard way
When I was 4 years old, I was invited to a birthday party up the street for my friend, Johnny. (I went to school with half a dozen Johns or Johnnys. Any Catholic boy born in the early-1960s had at least a 1-in-2 chance of gaining the name in honor of JFK.)
Anyhow, Johnny, who had ascended to the advanced age of 6, held a certain dominion over us younger boys. Bigger, faster and “smarter” (because he had already been through a kindergarten and half the first grade), we looked up to him both literally and figuratively. A cult of personality is a dangerous thing in the hands of a 6-year-old.
Anyhow, at some point during the party while the parents were scooping ice cream or otherwise occupied, Johnny enriched our vocabulary with a gem I much later came to learn was a slang term for a certain anatomical feature of a bull, boar or ram.
It was a fun word, a powerful word and people of a certain age were apt to giggle uncontrollably when I said it. So I said it a lot, and I got a good number of laughs along the way — right up until I said it to Johnny’s mom. She didn’t even crack a smile.
When I got home, I found out why — the hard way!
This background was necessary to frame the story of the day, which cast my nearly 3-year-old grandson Max in the same naive role as the youngster at the party.
Max and his slightly older brother James returned one recent day from day care with Max gleefully giggling out a word that sounded a bit dubious. However, given the garbled enthusiasm with which he was saying it, the jury remained deadlocked. Both Mom and Dad tried to decipher the utterings but were likely in marginal disbelief that Max would actually be saying that. That’s when James stepped in.
“Oh hey, Mom and Dad,” he said. “Today we got a new kid at school named Jaxon, and he only comes in the afternoon. He was pretty funny. He taught Max a new word.”
“Thank you, James,” Mommy said. “We’ve been trying to figure out what Max is saying.”
James replied in plain-faced innocence, “He’s saying ‘@!#%$@#!,’ and I’m not sure what that is, but the teachers didn’t seem to like it much!”
The parents nearly passed out.
One wonders if Jaxon was only coming to school in the afternoon because he’s just coming off his shift down at the steel mill and happy hour doesn’t start until 5 o’clock.
Needless to say, Max was calmly corrected, and the folks at day care were notified of the new language being taught on the sly. As for poor Max, this could be a formative lesson. My own early transgression undoubtedly aided my career as a writer. From that moment on, I’d be doggone if I was ever going to use a new word without knowing exactly what it meant!
Kristin and John Lorson would love to hear from you. Write Drawing Laughter, P.O. Box 170, Fredericksburg, OH 44627, or email John at jlorson@alonovus.com.