Is It Just Me? – Words

Driving Charlie and Harrison home from school, I felt my patience splintering like a wooden spoon in a fresh carton of ice cream.

“You guys know the rules”, I said. “You can’t say a body part in public if it’s not one you possess.”

“But, we aren’t in public,” said my son, Harrison, his serious eyebrows raised in pyramid formation. “We’re in your car.”

“My car in on a public road that’s paid for by public taxes WHICH MAKES IT PUBLIC!” I declared. I felt momentarily brilliant until I remembered with whom I was debating. Harrison was only six.

“Let’s just do our chant,” whispered Charlie, my thirteen year-old son. And, so it began.

Harrison: Vajeen . . . .

Charlie: Ahhhh.

Harrison: Vajeeeeen . . .

Charlie: Ahhhhhhh.

Their raucous laugher shot through the open sunroof like a geyser and I felt grudgingly proud of their creativity. They’d found a way to be renegade without breaking the law. Still, this was Mom’s law they were skirting here – and in pants. How would I keep the promise I made to raise respectful men?In 2009, childhoods are shortened by too much information. The third last day of Charlie’s Grade Five year, I opened his knapsack to discover a letter announcing that the students would be given “The Sex Talk” the next day. I panicked. WHAT IF THERE WERE QUESTIONS? Plus, I wanted Charlie to learn about the ethics of sexual relations from his dad or me. I simply didn’t feel ready to discuss the topic yet. But, are you ever ready to have the sex talk with your kid? Are you ever ready to have your wisdom teeth extracted without anesthesia? I just wanted more time to prepare — a couple of extra decades, perhaps.

At the next pick-up, I scrutinized Charlie’s face. “How was your day?” I asked.

“You mean, how was the sex talk,” said Charlie.

I nodded vigorously.

“It was fine, Mom. Don’t worry. Chantal de Vere told me everything about sex in Grade Two.”

Grade Two! I squirmed on this news like a worm in a bait pail. “So, you’ve had all this . . . sex information since you were seven years old and you didn’t tell me?”

“I figured you already knew about it,” said Charlie with his cockeyed smile.

My son didn’t want to discuss his feelings about sex that day, but he did indulge me with a brief anatomy lesson and I was impressed with his delicate and considered descriptions of what went where.

Now, however, his tact had disappeared. “Harrison, what’s the name of my favourite city?”

Harrison’s face flashed with illicit knowledge. “REGINA!” he exploded and both boys burst into paroxysms again.

“And,” continued Charlie, “what do you have to watch out for if you’re playing tag with girls?”

“Booby traps!” howled Harrison.

Opting to grip the steering wheel instead of Charlie’s neck, I somehow made it home with my family intact. I opened a bottle of wine, inserted a straw and sat on the porch, weighing my culpability. I am no saint with the English language. The ability to choose just the right word for the occasion means that sometimes the word isn’t considered acceptable in polite society. Had I done my sons a disservice with my cavalier approach to language, my own bias for right over polite?

In Grade Seven, Charlie was taught a more in-depth unit on sex education. A vein bulged in his baby-soft neck as he raged that the Gym teacher had preached abstinence.

“You know, Mom,” he hectored me, “nobody can tell me not to do something except you or Dad, but even then, it’s MY decision. I don’t want to have sex with a girl right now, but if I did and I made her pregnant and she gave birth to a baby, I wouldn’t act irresponsibly. I’d raise that kid as if it was my own!”

It would be your own, you idiot! I thought, but I’d smiled like a Cheshire cat. Now, I wondered if Charlie was already showing respect towards the future mother of his children by committing to his involvement in their hypothetical upbringing.

I also considered Charlie’s other new courtly behaviours. Nowadays, he almost always remembers to hold the door open for others. He hasn’t quite mastered the concept of stepping aside so that people can actually pass through, but this is a kink he will smooth out in time. I sat up straighter, feeling hopeful.

I recently read that potty talk is an indication of intelligence in children. You need to be smart for wordplay. Kid humour is not just a triumph of language but also one of their earliest acts of defiance. I am parenting two Einsteins with large symbolic testicles and I feel proud!

There are few places in my children’s lives where it’s all right to exhibit hilarity in all its seething grossness. Our family provides such a safe place while also teaching the kids appropriate behaviour for the outside world. Maybe, my car is actually a mobile family room even when it’s driving “in public.” Maybe, I should just smile and serve snacks.

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