Oh, #@&$!

I was dreading this day. I knew it was going to happen. Alice dropped the F bomb.


After years of teaching high school, I am extremely conscious about the words that fall from my lips. Let's face it, people would most likely look down upon a teacher (an English teacher no less) who used profanity regularly in class. I often thanked the gods that people are not like cartoons because if my students knew the mental dialogue that ran through my mind 99.9% of the time they would have been shocked. Since, as the proverbial phrase goes, "old habits die hard", I regularly say "shoot" and "fudge" when I want to say something different. Since John mainly works with adults, who don't melt when a profanity slips, he has not had to ever worry about checking his language. And thus we see why I had the following conversation with my daughter:


I am driving home after picking up Alice from preschool. Both kiddies are strapped into their respective car seats and the Cars soundtrack in on the radio. A moronic (writer is being kind here) driver decides to just reverse out of her driveway without actually checking to see if (gasp) cars are driving along the main road. I blare on the horn and slightly swerve the car to avoid getting hit.


Me: Idiot!


Alice: Fuck!


Me: What did you say, Alice?


Alice: Fuck.


Me: Honey, that is a naughty word. We don't use words like that.


Alice: Daddy does.


Me: (internally) Oh, shit.