Earlier today, I was wrestling around with my son and he suddenly stops playing to say something to me… something totally out of the blue. He had, I guess, decided that I’m a little to liberal with my use of profanity around the house and started with, “Baba, don’t say bad words anymore.”

He then paused for a brief second, perhaps to lend dramatic effect since his tone was about to be completely normal — and I mean a totally non-plussed kind of normal. Not the kind of tone that you’d expect from a child who knows he’s about to say something he’s not allowed to, but also knows that he’s managed to find a loophole in the rules of language that govern children and wants you to know that you just got gamed. This is normal normal, like he’s about to tell me about his bike or something.

Anyway, let’s back up a bit for the sake of continuity. We wrestled. He stopped. He spoke. Out his mouth came, “Baba, don’t say bad words. (’One Mississippi’ pause) Don’t say ‘fuck’ anymore. ‘Fuck’ isn’t a nice word. Okay?”

The amusing thing (Yes, all I found it was amusing) about this was that I hadn’t said anything that involved the word all day. I have no idea what prompted him to say that to me at that moment.

I responded in the way that I think one should respond in these situations. I looked back at him calmly, without any bemusement or anger, and told him that I wouldn’t.

He then snuck in a quick punch-slap to my face and we resumed the wrestling.