Messy Minded Momma

The moment I found out I was having a boy at 20 weeks pregnant, I knew my life was about to get messier. Statistically speaking: more bumps and bruises, more sticky hands, more muddy clothes, more wrestling matches disguised as hugs, more STEM-based activities, and eventually… more adult words.

While I am certainly guilty of using the occasional curse word, I always tried not to use the F word around my parents. Something about that word as a kid felt dangerous. Like crossing a line you couldn’t uncross. It felt respectful not to say it in front of them. Even well into adulthood, I don’t think my parents ever heard me say the word “fuck.”

Men, apparently, are wired differently. The first time I heard my husband, a then 31-year-old man, casually drop the F bomb in front of his mother, my jaw hit the floor. I remember thinking, Are we allowed to do that? Slowly, his potty mouth started rubbing off on me. Tiny F bombs escaped here and there. First in front of his parents, and eventually, horrifyingly, in front of my own.

When my son came along, I quickly retired that word from my daytime vocabulary. Instead, I started saying things like “oh butter biscuits,” “for Pete’s sake,” “dagnabbit,” and my personal favorite, “what the Hellena?” We avoided music and TV with swearing, created a swear jar that my husband immediately started contributing to, and tried to keep our home relatively free of adult language.

Sure, I still said “shit” sometimes, but between the hours of 5:30 a.m. and 8:30 p.m., my adult vocabulary mostly consisted of words like “dingus,” “butt,” and “jabroni.”

Around age two, my son casually dropped his first adult word. I believe it was “shit,” and I am fairly confident I’m responsible for that one. I don’t remember what we were doing, but I do remember he used it perfectly in context. As adorable as it sounded, I did not laugh. I did not get angry. I didn’t make a big deal out of it. Instead, I calmly told him that if he was going to use adult words, he could use them in the bathroom. A rule he happily followed.

So happily, in fact, that he now reminds me of it in the car after I mutter, “Oh shit! What the Hellena?” when someone cuts me off in traffic.

I felt good about my decision. No shame. No punishment. Just boundaries. I figured it was a phase and the novelty would eventually wear off.

Then he started Junior Kindergarten.

Now my son is learning a whole new category of adult words that I am absolutely not prepared for. The F word has made an appearance, and I can confidently say that one was not learned in our house. His vocabulary has expanded but so has his understanding of where those words land.

“Stupid” and “jerk” are currently his top contenders when he is really mad.

The other day he went to call my husband stupid. As soon as the word started leaving his mouth, my husband jumped in.

“Stuuu—”

“What did you just say?”

“Stu,” my son replied calmly. “I called you Stu. Your name is Stu.”

And in that moment, I did something a mother is absolutely not supposed to do.

I laughed.

I laughed so hard at the three-foot-five-inch version of younger me standing in front of us, improvising his way out of trouble in real time.

Because the truth is, my playground days were also full of trash talking. I called names. I delivered age-appropriate disses aimed squarely at the bullies of the 90s. By the time I was a teenager, I had developed entire systems of coded language so I could curse at home without technically cursing. In 1999, I was using the numbers on the dial pad of our landline phone to spell words and insults. I was texting before texting existed.

One time I went to call one of my siblings a bastard, failing to notice my father standing directly behind me.

“Basss—”

Tap on the shoulder.

I turned around to see my dad’s expression and immediately panicked.

“A fish!” I blurted. “A fish! A fish!”

To this day, I have no idea where that cover story came from, but somehow it worked. I walked away feeling like a fish who had just escaped troubled waters.

And the irony is not lost on me. Twenty-seven years later, I am raising the tiny boy version of myself.

Having an adult lens on your childhood is a strange experience. It is rewarding, humbling, and occasionally a little alarming. Because now I see the strategy, the quick thinking, the emotional reactions, and the creativity that lived inside my own brain back then.

And now I see it living inside his. Which means I know exactly how that brain works. And if history tells me anything, it’s that the curse of adult words isn’t the swearing. It’s realizing your child inherited the same quick-thinking mouth you did.