The F-Bomb and Other Fun with Words

Last week, out of nowhere, the world’s sweetest 2-year-old started using the F-bomb. Now I’m not sure if she’s really saying that word or if she made it up by accident. She says a lot of nonsense words lately. Example: I say, “Little-C, what color is your spoon?” and she replies, “No, it’s not my spoon, it’s my waKAKasha.” I read somewhere that although this seems like pathetic regression, it’s actually an important developmental stage to experiment with language. So it’s not unusual for her to put together random sounds and syllables and use them as though they were real words.

So one night last week she’s sitting at the table hitting her beloved ducky with a stick and she says, “I’m ‘fricking’ him. I’m going to ‘frick’ ducky.” In place of ‘frick,’ imagine that she is very sweetly and very clearly dropping the F-bomb. As I pick my jaw up off the floor and try to keep from laughing hysterically, Dan distracts her by using other nonsense words, “Oh really, are you going to ‘hicka blick’ him with that stick? Are you ‘wucking’ him? How about a ‘gick’?” She replies that ducky does indeed need to be ‘gicked.’ And we move on with our lives.

UNTIL, a couple of days later. We’re sitting in the lobby at church and Little-C is talking to herself. “Blah blah blah, ducky. What can we do? Mom says we can’t do that. It’s SO dangerous. Yadda yadda yadda, we can’t touch the plug or we’ll get very kranky so we can be naked, bladda bladda blah blah.” (If there’s one thing her talking isn’t, it’s cessant. It is, in fact, INcessant.) I half tune her out until I notice that she’s repeating one phrase over and over, “This is ‘frickin’ awful. This. Is. Frick. In. Aw. Ful.” Again, substitute the above f-word for something much spicier.

I can’t for the life of me figure out where she gets this. You, like my friend Karli, may call me a liar but I swear on my sister Heather’s signed poster of Lash LeRoux (local WWF-style wrestler) that I have never said that word in my life. At least not out loud. Since my post partum wackiness with Big-O, I’ve thought it a few times in my testier moments but I’ve never said it out loud. So, there are three options — either she made up the word and somehow magically manages to use it in perfect context, she is telepathic and has heard me say it in my head in a fit of repressed post partum rage, OR, one of my seemingly sweet Mormon mom friends swears like a sailor whenever I’m not around.

Right now I’m working on a way to casually bring it up with these ladies, “Hey Tina, how’s it going? Those blueberry muffins you made for us out of food storage items were so yummy. I’d love to get the recipe sometime. And thank you so much for sharing your testimony in church on Sunday. We were all so moved. So, do you happen to drop the F-bomb every other word when Little-C is playing over at your house? I mean, not that it matters, but I was just wondering. So, did you sponge paint that wall mural yourself?”

Little-C has also been really into names lately. She hears me call Big-O Buddy-Magoo and thinks it’s hilarious and wants to know what her “other” name is. I tell her that when she was little, we called her Laylee. She loves it. Today when someone asked for her name, she looked over her shoulder at me as if she were about to do something really naughty, then turned to the man and said, “I’m Laylee and my brother’s name is Buddy-MagOOOOO.” She should have added, “And my parents are morons who shouldn’t be allowed to name a pile of dirt.”