Connor kept asking yesterday when Jim would be home. I didn't know, so I suggested he call to find out.
So he did.
And Jim said, "Soon, buddy, soon. I'm stuck in a bit of a traffic jam."
A while later, Connor wandered over and said, a bit timidly, "Mama? I'd like to know what 'damn' means."
Where that came from—and why I assumed he meant "damn" and not "dam"—is beyond me. What an easier conversation it would have been if I had just explained that a dam is something that beavers and sometimes people build to block the flow of water. My blue-eyed boy and I could have had a lovely conversation about the Hoover Dam and Boulder Dam and Grand Coulee Dam. And we could have talked about how and why beavers build dams.
But, noooo. I silently cursed the fact that I was in the hot seat—"silently," because I didn't want to explain a whole different swear word—and I said, "Well, Connor, 'damn' isn't a nice word. It is not very respectful. It's something that people might say when they mean to say, 'Gosh darn it' or, like Gramma says, 'Fiddlesticks.' It's just not a nice word, and it certainly isn't a word that you should say," I added.
"Oh," Connor replied. His little brain was processing, calculating, figuring it all out, I just knew it.
He turned and looked out the window and then said, "But I can say it when I'm talking about a traffic jam, right?"
"A traffic jam?"
And then, it clicked. Connor had asked me to explain "jam," not "damn." Curses.
That would have been another totally different conversation.
©2011, Jennifer Linney.
