Bad Words

For the record, I think that most of the bad words I know I learned from my father. Not that he purposely sat down and taught them to me, just that he used them freely probably around the time I was in fifth or six grade and susceptible to picking up naughty words.   One of my favorite phrases my Dad used to use with us when we were young to describe someone we did not care for was to say, “He is such a shit bird.” Considering all that you can imagine my surprise when my father told me the following story when we were touring his childhood haunts.

As we drove up to the Ardmore School where my father had gone to first through seventh grade he pointed out the window of the principal’s office. He described her as a nice woman, but that she had a rubber hose in her desk drawer that she would use to hit children who needed punishment. We drove around the backside of the school and as we did my Dad said, “This is where I heard my first bad word.”

Hearing a bad word in elementary school did not seem like that unusual a thing. My Dad continued, “Yes, I remember it like it was yesterday. We were sitting in class and then as matter-a-factly as anyone could be Adam Sandler said out loud, ‘somebody farted.’ And all hell broke lose.”

“How old were you?” I asked. That is when my father shocked me. “We were in fourth grade.”

What?!? Fourth grade was the first time my father had ever heard anyone say a bad word, and it was the only barely a bad word, “FART.”

“Adam Sandler was sent to the Principal’s office and we all were shocked. I never forgot it.”

A while later as my father was driving through the neighborhood pointing out where all his friend’s had lived we passed by Adam Sandler’s house. “I wonder what ever happened to him? I bet he ended up in jail.”

It was comical to me that my Dad who taught me every bad word on earth thought that this nine-year old potty mouth ended up in jail. For the record this Adam Sander is not the famous one, but I have no idea if they are related.

In a real juxtaposition when Carter was in third grade she came home and said, “Benjamin told me that the “F” word is the worst word. I told him to tell me what it was so I won’t say it. He said, ‘No way, your Mom would kill me.’” So Carter asked me to tell her what the “F” word was. Not wanting to have to define it for her I quickly told her it was “Fart.”

“Hmmm,” she said. “I did not know that was such a bad word.” Oh how times have changed.