Most parents I think worry or wonder when their kid might finally start repeating swear words they hear. The tale of my initiation into the world of cursing was the subject of family lore however.
First, to set the scene, my nana spent a lot of time with me when I was young. She lived with us briefly and I firmly cemented my place as number one favorite grandchild by climbing up into her attic room to cuddle on the regular.
She’d take me on errands and watch me when my parents were at work. She even once lured me away when she ran into my dad watching me at a store. She didn’t think he was keeping a close enough eye and called me over to her a few aisles away.
I happily complied since I loved and recognized her, then we watched my dad for several minutes before he finally looked down, saw me missing, and panicked. “That’ll teach you to keep a better eye on her!” My nana scolded him, convinced that every babynapper was slavering for her precious redheaded grandbaby.
So one day my mom had me in the car. We were driving along and from my back seat I chirped, “Can we play pretend?”
My mom smiled, imagining I’d start narrating some silly adventure or something. “Sure.”
“Shit shit SHIT SHIT SHIT!!!” I yelled at the top of my lungs.
My mom sat stunned in the front seat, baffled momentarily by the stream of cursing.
After careful questioning it was pretty obvious what had happened. My nana had sworn up a storm in front of me but didn’t want to come clean about it to my parents when I started repeating it. She’d instead invented a fun game and the rules were that I could only curse when we were playing our special pretend game.
My mom was furious, and my nana got a sound dressing down both for the cursing but more importantly for the lying.
My favorite time telling this story though was to a girl in high school. She listened with wide eyes then asked, “Did your mom fire her?”
“Your nana? Did she get fired?”
“My…. Grandmother? Did my mom fire my grandmother??”
“Ohhhhh. Not the nanny then.”
