Bad Words and Walking

[ailbhe]

Yesterday morning early we brought Linnea to the playground in the rain and two tiny boys - they were very tiny, this is me saying it, I'd know a tiny boy if I saw one, though I couldn't reliably identify a large one - were casually using the word Fuck. They weren't swearing, or swaggering, or talking about sex - it was an ordinary punctuation word, like "um" or "er" to them.

I found this very sad.

Shortly after we first moved to this house, I observed a parked car on the opposite side of the street, and a man shouting at a boy to stop being a fucking idiot and get in the fucking car. The boy was pre-pubescent, or possibly barely pubescent but I don't think so, and the man was definitely old enough to be his father, so it seems probable that he was.

I found this infuriating.

Is this a terribly oldfashioned attitude? I mean, I don't generally have a problem with adults swearing in front of children, though teaching tiny tots obscene language is more amusing if you use erudite obscene language, but there's something very depressing about the use of perfectly useful swears as non-words. And I just don't think people should swear at each other anyway, especially not adults swearing at children. It's nasty and yuk.

In other news, the Health Visitor says that Linnea can walk, so I can stop being all self-effacing and saying "She doesn't do it for very long, you see, so maybe it doesn't count." She's nine months and three days old, and she can walk.

That's over a month earlier than I did it. I called my mother to let her know.

This morning, Linnea and I slept in and then danced to Dolly Parton. It's a good way to start the day.