This weekend The Boy’s best friend from Maryland came and stayed with us for 3 days and 3 nights (for the sake of respecting his privacy, I’m going to call him “D-boy”). The Boy and D-boy have known each other for a few years now, and even though they’re 100 miles apart, they still talk fairly regularly on the phone, still attend each other’s birthdays whenever possible, and still just “click” whenever they’re in the same room together.
The Boy and I made the trek down to pick D-boy up on Thursday night and on the 2-hr ride home they chattered away like crazy, attempting to discuss what 9-year-old boys consider adult topics and attempting to sound adult about them while they did it. This was highly entertaining (and eye-opening) for me, and really tested my ability to refrain from laughing hysterically at their views on school, the President, and which Youtube videos are gross/hilarious/inappropriate.
It was during their discussion of Youtube videos that I got a glimpse of just how naive I’ve kept my son when it comes to things like bad language, situational violence, and anything remotely sexual. I should add here that I don’t actively cull all violence, language, and nudity–he knows nudity through art (paintings, drawings, sculpture, etc) and natural situations like breast-feeding mothers or changing babies’ diapers; I swear like a sailor when mad, a habit I’ve never been able to break; and we play video games like Gears of War, Call of Duty, Halo–and I LOVE prat falls & sucker-punches in my comedies.
I think out of those three though, I tend to be more limiting on violence than I am on language or nudity/sexuality–mostly because I tend to think of language, nudity and sexuality as a natural part of existence, of being a well-rounded human. I do not want him growing up feeling ashamed of his body or unable to look beyond the nudity of the Venus de Milo when we visit the Louvre someday.
I also believe quite firmly that there are some situations where no other words will do than swear words, but he’s been taught that they are words to use carefully and responsibly and that he cannot use them until he is an adult and can understand the full ramifications of choosing to use them (or not). Of course, I have no illusions that he doesn’t try out a bad word here or there with the boys on the playground–he is going into 5th grade now and boys will be boys…
All that said–and because I have the technical know-how–The Boy’s internet access is filtered. He is not allowed to roam willy-nilly on the ‘net, watching whatever he wants or reading about whatever he wants. Unfortunately most of his friends do not have parents who know how to filter things… so they talk about all these videos he’s never seen and these songs he doesn’t know and these “totally gross things” that people do to each other–things they’re too embarrassed to describe out loud. Usually, when they realize The Boy has no comprehension of what they’re talking about, they roll with it and don’t feel the need to elaborate on something they know they shouldn’t have watched in the first place. Most of them also don’t realize that my son babbles to me about most everything–especially about computer things because I make my living building websites.
This time I was there for the conversation, and it went something like this…
D-boy: “I don’t know if your mom lets you watch youtube, but there’s this cartoon thing on there that is funny! They do these stick-figure skits and one of them has them getting hit on the head with a cheeseburger…”
The Boy: “Oh, yeah, I can’t get to youtube but my mom will load up the video if I ask her to and if she thinks it’s okay for me to watch…”
D-boy: “This one has some inappropriate language in it, but not REALLY bad stuff–not like the H-O word or the F-word or anything like that.”
The Boy: “The H-word isn’t that big a deal–I’ve seen and READ stuff with the H-word in it.”
D-Boy: “No–I’m not talking about H-E-L-L… I mean the H-O-something-something-something word.”
(The Boy ponders this for a minute while I sit in the front seat also trying to figure out what word he’s talking about…)
The Boy: “Ummmm… I don’t know a swear word that begins with H-O….”
D-Boy: “H-O-O…something…..”
Me: “K-E-R…?”
D-Boy: “YES!”
The Boy (confused): “That’s a bad word?”
D-Boy: “…well, do you know what that is?”
The Boy: “Nope!”
D-Boy: “Well, it’s probably for the best… it’s gross.”
The Boy: “Then don’t tell me!”
Me: “YOU know what that word is, D-Boy?”
D-Boy: “Yeah… I know a lot of words from being around my dad…”
Me: “Oh…”
D-Boy: “He sometimes yells at people when he’s driving. He calls them names and stuff. Like sometimes he screams ‘Get off the road Mildred & the Blue-hairs!’…
The Boy: “…Mildred? What’s a Mildred?”
D-Boy: “I dunno. I think it’s a mean name for an old lady…?”
They both looked at me expectantly. I know ’cause I could see their little cherub faces waiting for an explanation when I glanced into the rearview mirror.
Me: “Um… well, based on the context I’m guessing he was trying to say they were too old to drive…? Sometimes older women have blue-ish colored hair and Mildred is an old-fashioned name…”
Me (added hastily): “But Mildred is not necessarily an insult!”
(brief pause while everyone sort of recovers from that one)
D-Boy: “Anyway… so this video doesn’t have any of those words in it, so maybe your mom would let you watch it–oh! and it also doesn’t have the worst ones like the N-word…”
The Boy (interrupts): “Oh! There was this boy at school last year who told me about that word at recess… he kept saying ‘It’s like the word TIGGER–but with an N!’”
D-Boy: (cracks up laughing)
The Boy (continues): “…and I said ‘Nnnnnn-tigger?…or Tiggernnnnn?’…and they laughed at me! I felt so stupid!”
I managed to suppress my laughter. D-Boy didn’t even try.
They went back to playing Bakugan, and I went back to my own thoughts. It was interesting to realize that my son probably hadn’t ever heard that word in our house, music, movies, or even public situations/events we’ve attended. It was also interesting that I’d never even thought about it before–it never occurred to me that he wouldn’t have been exposed to that type of negativity or use of language, or even heard it as part of the pop culture of rap/gangsters. The people I’ve had in our lives, the music we enjoy, the things we watch don’t even venture close to a point of view or line of thinking that would bring words like that into his vocabulary.
It also made me a little sad, once I thought all that through, that he now knows that word.
Filed under: Stuff, The Boy, The Opposite of Genius
