Family stories. The classics Everybody’s got them, right? The thing that was said that lives on, in infamy. Or possibly glory!
Commenter wjca told this one in the wee hours of the night last night, in a discussion about swearing.
Almost 3 years old younger brother, over some minor oops: “Damn it!” Almost 5 years old me, with the authority of my superior years: “No, David, it’s ‘God damn it!’.”
Mother, in the next room, suddenly realizing, with a bit of a shock, that her language around us might need a bit of restraining,
Which made me think of the classic story of my niece, at the shoe store when she was 4 or 5 years old.
While trying on shoes, she managed to use nearly every form of the word fuck, properly conjugated. Fuck. Fucking. Fuck it.
I think the original “fuck” was when she had trouble getting a shoe on. “Fucking” was in reference to a problem with the zipper on her jacket. I do not recall the context for “fuck it”.
I’m sure my sister was mortified, but I thought it was hysterically funny.
Similar to wjca’s story, it led to a conversation with my sister’s husband and what could and could not be said around the kitchen table when his friends were over after the kids were “asleep”.
Any family stores that you guys would like to share?
Open thread!
Albatrossity
Elizabeth likes to relate the tale of when the preacher was visiting with her grandparents, and her mother was a small child. The preacher commented that the pie was very tasty, which prompted this from Elizabeth’s mom: “Once we had a pie. But a goddamned mouse ate it.”
VeniceRiley
My favourite family story involves my much older 3 sisters, some ketchup, a knife, and them scaring their little brother into thinking one of them killed another. Then the third sister helping him escape and locking him in the station wagon. That’s when the allegedly murderous crazy sister ran out laughing with her ketchupy knife and he would not get out of the wagon. The neighbors had to call my dad at work to come home right away. It’s legend, and happened before I was born.
Phylllis
A family-ish story: Years ago, when a college friend’s son was about six, we were leaving a restaurant, she was zipping up his jacket and he just busted out with ‘testicles’. Which caused me to stifle a snort and her to turn white as a sheet. In the car, she tried to explain ‘that word you used, it’s not a bad word, but you shouldn’t say it in public’. His reply, ‘what word mommy? I said lots of words’. And then five seconds later launched into what I call the testicles song, which consisted of singing the word testicles over and over to a tune of his own making.
Nukular Biskits
What kinds of family stories?
I have one involving me, my brother, a catalpa tree and an improvised explosive device, which ends with both me and my brother getting one helluva ass-whuppin’.
Eunicecycle
My husband had an old wind-up Baby Ben alarm clock when our older daughter was little. One day we were in a store and she saw one like it. She excitedly yells, “Daddy’s clock! Daddy’s clock!” although without the ‘L’. I tried to shush her but of course that only made things worse. I did get a lot of sympathetic smiles!
pika
Apparently I shocked my mother when she was parallel parking–she began to back up and toddler me let out with a torrent of the most vivid profanity: I usually was in the car with my father and thought that’s just what you do when parking
WendyBinFL
Oh, this is fun! My husband, who had been working on Wall Street, accepted a job offer in Miami when our daughter was three and our son, 18 months. Mr. B went off to the office and I was left to wrangle the movers. When Mr. B came home, he had a few choice words for the moving men, who’d be returning the next morning to complete the job. When they arrived, our son greeted them at the door with a cheerful, “Hi, fucking assholes!”
TBone
@Phylllis: 😆
EarthWindFire
Since I missed the swearing thread, my younger sister made a portmanteau curse word at age 3. We could hear her upstairs opening and closing drawers, apparently looking for something. Then, a moment of silence before her little toddler scream, “God fuck it!”
Wapiti
When I called my little brother a “motherfucker”, my mom suggested that I use “Republican” instead. She helpfully pointed out that it had the same number of syllables.
TBone
I am dead from laughter! 💀
Phylllis
My parents were very old school and never, and I mean never, swore in our presence when we were kids. In fact, I remember the first time I heard my mother use damn when I was about twelve or thirteen and I was left waiting for the lightning to strike. My husband and I were sharing childhood stories one day and he was telling me about a poem he wrote when he was seven or eight, with the final word being shit. I was genuinely shocked, and asked how he knew that word at that age. He looked at me and said, “Are you kidding? It was my dad’s favorite word.”
zhena gogolia
@EarthWindFire: I like it!
The Hungarians have one, “Fuck your God!” but this is better.
CaseyL
My grandmother’s philosophy about reading was: We could read any book we found in the house, but no one would explain any parts we didn’t understand.
That led to me reading quite a few books that adults normally wouldn’t let subteens read (certainly not back in the 1960s). I started to read “Valley of the Dolls” because I thought it was about… dolls, right? Quickly lost interest when I realized it was not, in fact, about dolls.
But that’s not the story about cusswords I’m thinking of.
Another book I found on a shelf in the house was “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolfe?” – a bound, novelized version of the script, I think.
I started reading it because… “Wolf”! – I thought it would be about wolves. (I think I was 9? 10? at the time, and already loved all animals everywhere.)
Narrator: The book was not about wolves.
I understood very little about what I was reading, except that everyone seemed to be really mad at everyone else. Since this was my family’s default setting, it made sense to me.
And the mad people in the book had some really amazing ways to express their anger! One phrase in particular stuck with me, and I used it on my mother the next argument we had. I can’t remember what she said, but I do remember triumphantly yelling back “Well, screw you!”
Her jaw dropped, her eyes popped, and she demanded to know where I had heard that phrase.
“In one of Nanny’s books.” (Nanny being my grandmother.)
Mom had some words with Nanny that evening.
WaterGirl
@Eunicecycle: Oh my god, your story made me remember our zoo story. How could i have forgotten it?
Background notes
I should note as background that we 3 sisters learned about the birds and the bees, the right words for body parts, etc, when we each turned 5. Also, growing up, after a shower my parents would walk the few steps to the bedroom without any clothes on.
The story
Fast forward to a trip to the Brookfield Zoo, where they sold packets of those awful orange “circus peanuts” so you could feed them to the elephants.
Aside: could that have possibly been good for the elephants???
Anyway, my mom bought a bag and said we could feed the peanuts to the elephants, and little 5-year-old me exclaimed loudly “not Daddy’s!”
WaterGirl
@pika: LOL. LIterally.
@WendyBinFL: Again!
I have to stop adding names, but you are all making me laugh out loud. I did not know this thread would be so funny.
WaterGirl
@EarthWindFire: That has a lot of potential!
RedDirtGirl
Not my family, but a favorite story from my childhood. Neighbors of ours were very liberal, and had a lax policy about cursing, but before going to visit the southern relatives the kids were warned that “you can’t say the word shit around your grandparents”. So during a game of Monopoly, young Robert gets sent to jail. “Shit, I mean, fuck!”
la caterina
Granny had a mynah bird in the front room of her little house in North Carolina. One time Granny was in her underwear and the Preacher knocked on the door. Bird said “come in.”
WaterGirl
@la caterina: rut roh.
Old School
Since I’ve consistently been reading comments about a pet named Noodles in the comment threads late for the past few days, I’ll tell this in the family story thread.
My in-laws like to tell the story of when new neighbors moved in next to them years ago. Their dog got out of the new house and so they got to meet their neighbors while searching for their pet.
My mother-in-law opened the door and was asked by a stranger, “Have you seen my Noodle?”
The story goes that my father-in-law leapt out of his chair pretty quickly.
dlwchico
Decades ago my aunt took my young cousin to the movies. They went to see The Jerk because she figured with Steve Martin it would be a family friendly comedy.
There is a scene in that movie where Martin’s character does a funny bit about getting a blow job and it caused laughter in the theater and my little cousin said loudly in the theater “Mom, what is a blow job?”
She was mortified as this caused even more laughter from the audience than the movie had.
RevRick
I once read a short story which asserted that a man’s barber was the second-most lied to person after his wife and preacher. Nevertheless, some family stories leaked out.
I was never offended by “swear” words. What shocked me was open expressions of racism or antisemitism.
What I find amusing was when my family’s secrets leaked out. You get the expurgated version as a child and the rawer truth as an adult.
My paternal grandfather told me that he came to America in 1910 from Germany, because he sensed war was coming and didn’t want to risk being called back to active duty. (Today would have been his 142nd birthday)
My dad later told me he (grandpa) got kicked out by his mother, because he was having an affair with a married woman (and might have gotten her pregnant).
I was out playing with my friends one day, I think we were around five, and we began chanting, “Some of an itch!” After about the tenth time we heard a window fly up, and one girl’s mother hollered, “It’s pronounced, ‘Son of a bitch!’ and if I ever hear you say it again, I’ll wash your mouth out with soap!”
Phylllis
@CaseyL: Reminds me of finding a paperback copy of The Happy Hooker when I was about twelve. Very quickly determined it was not, in fact, about knitting or rug making.
Orange is the New Red
When our daughter was maybe 3, she helped my dad in the garden. He dropped something, and said “oh sh….”, to which she helpfully responded, ” did you mean ‘oh, shit’ Grandpa?”. He thought it was hilarious, but my mom was not impressed.
Leto
@RevRick: it was… soap poisoning!
Leto
@Orange is the New Red: Do you know what your son just said?
Eunicecycle
@WaterGirl: LOL! Male body parts seem to be involved in a lot of stories
ETA and clergy!
Scamp Dog
My family would always get together a couple of times a year with two of my dad’s friends and their families. One of them, Mr. D, swore a lot. One day the pastor asked his daughter Margaret what was her name. She replied Margaret, and then he asked Margaret what, trying to get her to say her last name, too. She thought hard, and came up with what her dad said along with Margaret sometimes, and replied “Margaret goddammit”. Good times!
RevRick
@Leto: A Christmas Story for the win.
TS
Went shopping in very quiet shopping area – car park 90% empty. Got back to car & a driver had managed to block me in – really unpossible. Got 2 year old into car seat, waited. Driver came, not a word, got into his car & took off. Out of the window I screamed “You stupid !#$%! bastard”
All the way home from the back – Mommy – what’s a “stupid !#$%! bastard”
Avalune
My father taught my then five year old cousin to run jump on her sleeping mom and yell “breakfast bitch!” I may or may not sometimes wake up and say this to Leto.
My grandmother would tell a story in which I was trying to get my tricycle over the fence between her yard and the neighbor’s yard where I had been playing. Probably 4 years old. She kept her kitchen windows open all the time to let the cigarette smoke out of the kitchen where she usually sat chain smoking and playing solitaire. She says I became frustrated with the tricycle getting caught on the bent chain link and started streaming a string of curse words. She rushed out threatening me with a switch. I looked at her and said she’d have to fuckin catch me first and darted around the garage where I proceeded to lead her on a chase of several laps around the garage, screaming and laughing and still cursing up a storm.
My grandmother rarely cursed herself – very very rarely. So I will never forget when she broke the tip of her favorite knife on a pack of frozen hot dogs and shouted god damned wieners! The three pubescent girls sitting outside the window burst out laughing. God damned wiener was a rally cry the rest of the summer.
Another classic, my dad somehow got himself a fire extinguisher full of water. After a cousin’s wedding he and a couple of his brother’s drove us around town where my dad would hop out of the car and run into the bar, hose down the people in it and run for the car. I watched out the back window as a hoard of angry drunks chased after him like a scene out of a zombie movie – simultaneously in awe and somewhat afraid of what they’d do if they caught up to him or the car. In addition to drunks in the bar, they’d pull up to people walking and ask them if they knew where “water street” was – I’m sure you can imagine what came next.
wjca
I’m honored to be responsible for an entire thread. Especially with a comment on what I thought was a dead thread. Gotta be a good day!
WaterGirl
@Avalune: A trouble-maker from a long line of troublemakers!
I salute you.
eponymous
I grew up in Nogales, AZ. My sister, in high school, got an assignment to read Voltaire’s Candide. She went to the library & requested it. The librarian, an older, somewhat stern woman, refused indignantly, saying my sister needed an adult to check it out. So there we went, sister, mother and I (junior high) to get the book. We confronted the librarian who reached slowly into her locked cabinet, and, giving my mother a truly nasty stinkeye, presented us with … Terry Southern’s ‘Candy’.
Dropped jaws on the part of all three eponymous women, then we explained the mistake. The three of us thought this was pretty funny, but the librarian got even more suffused with indignation, if anything.
CaseyL
@Phylllis: It really is amazing what titles kids will find intriguing enough to try at least the first few pages – and how garbled their understanding is when they read something really, really unsuited to children :)
FDRLincoln
My 18 year old son is autistic and mainly non-verbal. But two words he does know are “fuck” and “shit” and he uses them as curses appropriately.
We are mortified but his teachers think it is funny.
indycat32
My mom went to church every week and never cursed. One day us kids were getting on her last nerve and when one of us spilled the milk mom yelled “where’s the god damn, son-of-a-bitching, shitting-ass mop?” From that day forward, whenever one of the kids was angry or frustrated, or just wanted to tease our mom, the curse word of choice was MOP!!
Geo Wilcox
Hilarious. All the stories are so funny.
When I was about 12 I got really tall and my arms grew freakishly long (great for sports!). Well I said fuck one day and my mom came out of no where to smack me. I was way taller than her and just put my hand on her head and held her at arms length. She couldn’t reach me and my sister almost peed her pants laughing at us. I proceeded to say fuck at the top of my lungs the whole time. Did I mention we were outside in the back yard and the whole hood heard me?
My mom was really sick a lot and had to be in hospital, dad worked two jobs and was going to night school so we were pretty much on our own all the time. Naturally our house was the most popular, no adults, and lots of shit went down there. The best was when we had water balloon fights in the house with condoms and hoses.
Ken
@TS: This is why I always carry the necessary tools in my trunk.
According to family legend, a lawyer informed one of my great-grandparents that he had a large inheritance back in the old country (Scotland). Great-grand hired the guy to go claim it, and later found out that the lawyer had presented himself as my great-grand and stolen the money.
I’ve come to suspect the inheritance was a scam from the get-go, and my great-grand made up the part about it being stolen to hide that he’d been more blatantly fleeced.
WaterGirl
@eponymous: I had never heard of the book the librarian kept locked away. The Google tells me that it’s a satire of Voltaire’s Candide.
zhena gogolia
@RedDirtGirl: 😂😂😂
Anonymous At Work
OFF-TOPIC, but Florida peeps should be ready for a decent hurricane hitting darn near entire state. Milton is coming.
WaterGirl
@zhena gogolia: I would be hard-pressed to pick the best story. They are all so good!
eponymous
@WaterGirl:
We (a bunch of high school/junior high kids) got to pass it around one summer on a vacation to Guaymas, where one of the kid’s parents had a house and a houseboat – good times! I wasn’t up to the comparative literature thing at the time, but I still remember “The hump! give me the hump!” I was keenly focused on the sexytime stuff.
TBone
A heart warming family classic
https://youtu.be/_42tJgX_S48
Ken
@WaterGirl: It’s also a movie, one of those weird ones where you wonder how such a great cast got involved with such a horrible film.
NeenerNeener
Neither of these stories is about my family, just stories I’ve heard:
1. Some small child being told not to touch something she considered absolutely fascinating on a table at Christmas and was overheard muttering “Son of a bitch, I’m going to touch it anyway!”
2. One of my co-workers had a two year old that said anything that came into her head, any time, any where. One night said co-worker and her husband took her out to dinner. While they were waiting for their order a rather well-endowed woman came in and walked past their table. Said two year old stood up on her chair, patted her chest and yelled “Boobies, boobies, boobies!”
Jennifer
As a teeny kid my son pronounced “tr” as “f”, as in trail/fail. We were waiting in an office for an appointment when a fire truck went roaring by, and of course he was thrilled by the “fire fuck”
Trivia Man
This one is about me. I spent a year of high school living with relatives in another state. I had been very sheltered so just hanging out with kids my age was new. A very tame, mostly Mormon, bunch but teenage boys gonna teenage.
I often, even now, get words stuck in my head that just resonate. I say them out loud, think them repetitively, drop them into conversation when possible.
I heard a nonsense string of syllables that tickled me – puddleck was what i heard. When i went home i used it as a generic replacement for jerk, goofball, idiot… very slightly derogatory word.
I vote vividly recall my mom using it to show empathy – “im sorry im such a puddleck,”
fast forward a good 10 years and one day a friend said “i know she wants my pud”. In a blinding flash of sudden realization i discovered i had called everyone i knew a pud licker to their face for about a year. Oops, i didnt mean to. 😳
eponymous
@Ken:
Also an operetta by Leonard Bernstein, some nice music in it.
Betty
My niece came home from kindergarten one day and proudly announced that she had learned the F word that day. Yes, it is fart, she told them. Her parents immediately agreed that it’s not a nice word, happy that her innocence lasted a bit longer.
TBone
@NeenerNeener: rotating tag nomination!
frosty
Great thread! So many funny stories – I regret I don’t have any to contribute.
WaterGirl
@frosty: Even with a twin brother, you have no stories? Giving you the side eye. :-)
JaneE
My father swore. Goddamned son of a bitch was probably his most frequent expression, but he never said fuck or fucking. Or so I thought. I was probably about 30, and opened the door to the garage to go out just as my dad screamed fuck at the top of his lungs over some problem he was dealing with. My mother was facing me, and told him that I was standing behind him. What she said was “Your little girl is right behind you”. My dad apologized for his language. He never did that either. I never heard him use that word again.
Jacel
Once in my youth my father heard me asking him, “What is poison sex?” He was relieved when I showed him the book I was reading about bees that had the term “poison sacs”.
At an earlier pre-verbal age my parents said they often heard me shout enthusiastically “SHUMDO!!!”. They said they looked forward to me learning to talk so they could ask me what that word meant, but by then I had forgotten.
dilbert dogbert
#1
my mom’s story about the preacher at dinner:
My dad had coffee after dinner. The preacher roared: Coffee. has never passed my lips and I am 6’2″. My dad roared it didn’t when I was young and I am 5’6″. RLDS for those in the know.
VeniceRiley
What do I win for having the only fake murder story? Hahahaha
Seonachan
When I was about 7 and my sister was 10, we were in Boston’s Quincy Market with our mother and passed a bakery that had an item called a Chocolate Orgasm. My sister asks, “What’s an orgasm?” My mother gets flustered and starts hemming and hawing. I didn’t understand why she was so tongue-tied over such a simple explanation, so I blurted out with an exasperated sigh, “It’s like a big brownie!”
SleepyMonster
I have weirdly few myself, but my wife has one from when she was about 8 years old when her dad got mad at her for no reason she knew and took away the ‘slippery balloon’ she’d found to play with. Blowing it up and bopping her brothers with it repeatedly. She was sad because it was a really good balloon. Didn’t realize til many years later what she actually had.
I guess he left a lot of things lying around, because another is when she found a ‘roll of paper’ and tore it up to add to a mud pie. Didn’t connect that, til years later, to her dad cursing about losing his very expensive cigar that same day, since she had no idea what a cigar was at the time.
Anotherlurker.
My family legend involved my Grandmother , a 4’9″ Scottish chef and her sister, a chambermaid. Both immigrated to this country and secured work on North Shore LI, NY estates. My great aunt was well known as being pathologically neat.
The story goes that when my Uncle Jim passed away, he was laid out in the parlor/living room. This was amazing to the entire family because the parlor was very nearly off limits , except for momentous occasions. All the furniture was protected by plastic covers.
Upon paying her respects to Uncle Jim, my Grandmother was heard to say “It is too bad Jim had to pass to be able to lie down in his own living room.”
Baud
@Jacel:
This is what I will shout when Harris is declared the winner.
Math Guy
We would take our daughter, when she was still very young, on “mystery trips” where she had to pack or get dressed not knowing where we were going. Part of the game was trying to guess before we got there. In December 2008 I decided to take her to the department’s family Christmas party where one of my colleagues would be dressed as Santa and handing out gifts. I announced that this was a short mystery trip and that she should get ready to go out for the evening. She asked if we were going sledding and I told her no. Then she asked if other people would be there, and I said yes, including “one very special person that you will get to meet.” All of a sudden her face lit up and she exclaimed “We’re going to see Barack Obama!”
Albatrossity
All the stories about parents who “never cussed, but…” reminds me of another.
As a child I never heard my mom swear. But when I was an adult she told me this joke, based on her Nebraska childhood.
Q. What’s the difference between a prostitute with diarrhea and a cornhusker with epilepsy?
A. Well, one shucks between fits, and the other one …
BellyCat
That’s Granny’s story and she’s sticking with it to the belief of nobody. 😂
mrmoshpotato
@Math Guy: And did you in fact take her to met President-elect Obama? 😁
frosty
@WaterGirl: The only cuss word I ever heard at home was “Damn” which my father used when things got really bad. I learned the f-bomb in 7th grade though.
OK, one with my brother. We had a factory job one summer during college and we’d go out to the car (Bugeye Sprite) to eat lunch in the parking lot. One day a bee flew inside:
Brother: “Fuckin’ bee!”
Me: “Fuckin’ A!”
Our spouses are so sick of hearing this they’ve made threats.
FastEdD
One day in HS I was parked in front of a gf’s house and we were smooching. A car honked, I looked up, and I was mortified to find my Mom, my Dad, and my little brother looking at me and laughing. They called out scores like 7.7! 5.2! 8.1! If it were the Olympics they would have been holding up cards judging my performance. I had a great family with a sense of humor. I’ll never stop bragging about them.
Math Guy
@mrmoshpotato: She got over her disappointment when she saw Santa.
NeenerNeener
I had one of those too! But mine worked on an estate in Silver Lake Pennsylvania.
hitchhiker
2002, when hitch-daughter #2 was 12 years old.
We’re in the car driving out of the neighborhood, and we pass a house where one of her friends lives. This friend, mind you, is the most demure child I’ve ever known. Always with the pert face and the clean clothes, etc.
hd #2 tells me that this friend got in trouble at their middle school today for swearing.
me: What? Really? What did she say?
hd #2: (with side-eye) You know … she was swearing.
me: So, she said … shit?
hd #2: (shrugs) She said all the words. That’s what I heard.
me: All the words?
hd #2: We all say all the words, Mom. (as if this is obvious)
me: (genuinely surprised) Do YOU say all the words?
hd #2: Sure.
So of course I said, “Well fuck! I’ve been not swearing in front of you all your life!” And then we were laughing and swearing up a storm together.
This is called bonding.
WaterGirl
@frosty: Funny!
trollhattan
Mom “learned” to swear with her outside voice probably in her 70s. Dad had been in the Navy in WWII so the full swearing generator was preinstalled, fired up, and ready to go at all times. Our kid rules however resembled those of the family in Christmas Story, Lifebuoy included.
narya
When my older nephew (who just became a father for the first time) was 5 or so, my brother observed him rooting around in his jockey shorts. Bro asked what he was doing–turns out that nephew had discovered that there was a pocket in the front of his shorts, in which he was storing his TicTacs.
Anotherlurker.
@NeenerNeener: Grandma was not someone to mess with. The Chef has a very high place in the servant’s hierarchy. Another legend has the master of the estate asking permission to enter his own kitchen . The kitchen was her domain and if you didn’t respect it, you were immediately informed of that fact.
Ruckus
@eponymous:
That sounds like the town librarian when mom took me there to get an adult library card. “He’s not old enough!” brought on a few choice words from mom. I don’t remember what words she used but my father was a machinist and had an extensive and ripe vocabulary that he didn’t normally use at home and mom had been basically the head of her family growing up, as the oldest and her father had heart attack when she was 18, and they on occasions had discussions and choice words were sometimes exchanged. Now I started working in dad’s machine shop on weekends/summers at 11 or so and swearing was an art form among the employees. So I saw this from all sides as of course school buddies would use words used at home to show how grown up they were. I believe it’s actually a bit unusual NOT to learn to swear as a child. Then of course I was in the USN, where swearing is mandatory. I think the rule was that you had to have at least one swear word per sentence, at the absolute minimum.
Fraud Guy
When I was a late teen, I was sitting around our dining room table with my grandmother, my mother, my aunt, and my aunt’s oldest daughter, and they were having a wide and varied discussion. My cousin had just gotten married, and my grandmother at one point chimed in:
“You girls have it lucky. If I had to do it over again, I wouldn’t have gotten married to your grandfather. We would still have shacked up and had kids, but I wouldn’t have gotten married.”
That was a bit of an eye-opener for me.
Later in the conversation, as they were talking about their husbands and in general, she had this bit of wisdom:
“All men are assholes.”
I perked up from the magazine I was reading.
“Except you, [Fraud Guy]. Otherwise, all men are assholes.” There was general agreement around the table.
I’ve tried to live up to her opinion ever since.
The Audacity of Krope
And I have tried to live down to it…
opiejeanne
When I was 5 or 6, the ice cream truck did not stop when we tried to flag it down, so Dad piled us all into the car and chased that truck into town. When he momentarily lost sight of that truck, I muttered “Damn it!” and Mom spun around and demanded to know where I had heard such a word. I almost said I learned it from Dad, which was true, but I didn’t think that would fly. I said I heard it on tv, which was very unlikely in 1955-56.
We did catch the ice cream truck and we all got ice cream.
scav
@Fraud Guy: Not in the same league, but it does somehow bring to mind my great-grandmother’s advice to her grand-daughter. “Never marry a man only because he can dance.”
Only advice ever passed down.
Nor was the undoubted story behind it ever related.
EireIAm
When I was 4 or 5 we spent a lot of time at a neighbor’s house playing in their pool. They had a willow tree that hung over the back fence and shed leaves into the pool. As the story goes I called the tree “that damn tree” as that was what the neighbor called it.
Marcus
@wjca: I was in tears. You provoked a lot of people’s happy memories. Thanks.
Reverse tool order
I don’t remember this from when I must have been around 5, was told about it later.
Riding in the car, downtown, with my mother. She is maneuvering for a parking place when some guy swoops in and takes it. So, I lean out the window and yell “You bastard, my mother wanted that place.” Apparently we did not linger.
princess leia
ROFL, I now fully understand why I love all of you so much.
pat
The only time I heard my dad swear was when some old army buddies were visiting. I think he did it just to fit in.
My mom, never. Maybe once in a while a “darn!”
Another Scott
@Anonymous At Work: Yup.
NHC.NOAA.gov – Cone.
NHC.NOAA.gov – Key Messages (graphic),
Be prepared, and careful, folks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Ruckus
I believe that it is unusual when people don’t swear.
I mean it doesn’t have to be constant, but swearing is part of humanity, a way to let off steam or create more. I’d bet that swear words are well known in every country and at every level of humanity. Some just learn to not use them – in every sentence. Now in the USN it seems that the goal was to use at least one in every sentence. The second goal was to use a long sentence with at least 90% swear words. BTW it can be done…. AND often gets the idea across rather well.
pat
Well, there’s NOAA, again, trying to scare everyone about a bit of rain and wind. Hmmph.
Maybe we should get rid of them.//
Trapped Lurker
When daughter was about 3, my 84-yr-old grandmother came east from Denver to stay with my Dad in Maryland while she had some minor surgery. She was a beautiful old woman—lovely bones, lovely face, fair, delicate and wrinkled skin, white hair in a style from the 1920s. We visited, and my daughter was fascinated. She watched her great-grandmother for a bit, then finally asked, “Great-grandma, how old are you?” Grandma said, “ I am very old, dear. How old do you think I am?”
She guessed a very high number, “Uh, 27?”
“Oh, no dear, much older! Guess again.”
Daughter screws up her face, thinking very hard, and came up with the highest number she could imagine: “28?”
Needless to say, my Grandma was utterly charmed …
WaterGirl
@hitchhiker: What a great, sweet story!
Evan
My favorite swearing-story about my child is from when she was about 3 or 4, and had learned the words but didn’t really have a handle on the music yet. One day while she was frustrated with a toy, she chirped out, “Oh, for heaven’s fuck,” and I completely love that and have been using it ever sense.
I have a really strange swearing-story from my own childhood. One Monday morning when I was 4 years old, my mom dropped me off at preschool, and when I went into the classroom, there was a strangely subdued mood among the other kids. A friend came over and explained to me, in nervous furtive whispers, that a new Bad Word had been announced over the weekend by whatever agency it is that decides words are bad. And this word was really bad, worse even than than the F word, and I would definitely get in the worst trouble of my whole entire life if I ever said it out loud! And just so I knew what word not to say from now on, my friend was willing to whisper it in my ear, one time.
(I won’t violate the taboo and post the unspeakable word here, but it actually sounded quite a lot like something Mario the Plumber says in video games nowadays. And I suppose that just shows you the depths of moral depravity our society has fallen into. The Super Mario games don’t even come with an ESRB warning for strong language. Tsk.)
Anyway, I have no idea where this idea had come from. I suppose one of the other kids must have made it up, figuring that nobody had any idea why any of the other words were supposed to be bad, so why not add to the canon? But the rest of us bought it completely, since nothing seemed implausible about it. Half of us turned into little delinquents, saying the word gratuitously, and the other half turned into little cops, triumphantly tattling on the first half: “TEACHER! STEVIE JUST SAID <MARIO CATCHPHRASE>!” Must have been a strange day for the teachers.
FDRLincoln
My older son, now age 26…
When he was 4 years old, I asked him what he wanted for dinner and he said “Kenfucky Fried Chicken”.
cope
Almost 60 years ago, our family of 7 was playing Scrabble in our Apache pop-up camper in the Montana part of Yellowstone. One of my brothers, about 9 years old or so, pondering his tiles asked “Is there such a word as e-n-e-m-a?
hitchhiker
@WaterGirl: Her twins are now almost 4 yrs old (born during the 1/6 riot!) and we’re all watching our language around them. I wonder how long it will last. :)
wjca
So it’s true. There IS a depression (not just a recession) coming! The gloom and doom economics crowd will be so pleased.
Villago Delenda Est
One Thanksgiving dinner:
Bobby, my brother: “I’m stuffed!”
My mom: “No, Bobby, you’ve had sufficient”.
Bobby’s response: “I’m sufficiently stuffed!”
WaterGirl
@hitchhiker: 45 minutes?
Jimbales
My late father grew up deep in the mountains of North Carolina during the depression. He would tell many stories. One had to do when he was a young boy, and he was very mad about something. He was so mad that he decided that he was going to swear at the dinner table.
He waited for an appropriate and conversation, looked around, and declared, “I’m mad! I’m mad, a God-damn!”
He was heartbroken when the rest of the family laughed at him.
Best,
Jim
WaterGirl
@Jimbales: We’ll I’m mad for your dad that they laughed at him.
WaterGirl
Same niece as in the story I started with came home from school asking “what’s a jaguar?” When asked “what makes you ask that?” the answer was that some at school had called someone a jaguar.
From then on, it became the running joke – if someone was being a dick we said “what a jaguar!”
JaneE
This would have been in ’64, when I was a sophomore in college. I had a sociology class and one of the texts was “The Call Girl”, written by a sociologist based on his interviews of very expensive prostitutes. They talked about what their customers wanted, and the book used the Latin terminology. Fellatio and cunnilingus for the aspects of oral sex. My mom liked to read my school books if they were general enough, and picked up that one. She asked to explain to her what fellatio and cunnilingus meant. I did, not without discomfort. Then she asked me how I knew what they meant, followed by a quick “never mind”.
hotshoe
@Wapiti: I love your mom!
PW
2-year old Mark in response to some setback: “Oh Shit!”
Parents: “Mark!!!”
Mark: “Oh! Oh!” “NO Shit! NO Shit!”
kalakal
A few years ago son-in-law had to drive the grandkids from Oradell in NJ to meet up with the rest of us in Chillicothe Oh.
When they arrived mrs kalakal has grandaughter had they had a good journey.
“Yes” she replied “and Daddy saw a lot of foxes, but I didn’t see any at all”
EarthWindFire
Front pagers, I’d like to suggest creating a thread of the year award. This one ranks high – these stories are hilarious!
Also, too, I love SHUMDO as a Democratic victory cry. h/t Baud
Jim Appleton
My sister age about four, two years my senior, “He hit me back first!”
opiejeanne
@opiejeanne: I left out the part where, before I said “damn it” in the chase for the ice cream, my dad was using that phrase pretty much the whole time until Mom asked me where I heard it.
RevRick
@FDRLincoln: My wife’s best friend’s son, when he was little also stumbled over the name of that chain, only he didn’t bother with the Ken part. His dad would constantly egg him on asking where he wanted to go for dinner. Dad thought this was hilarious; mom, not so much.
Tehanu
We were riding in the car and my husband, who was driving, had to slow down suddenly because somebody cut us off. From the back seat our three-year-old said, “Daddy, hit the dammit!” — meaning the horn, since that’s what Daddy said every time he did hit it.
Jim Appleton
@Villago Delenda Est: A similar exchange, the retort: “I’m sufficiafied suffoncified, and if I eat any more, I’ll go flipity flop.”
thalarctosMaritimus
Ok, this was just a couple of years ago, but it was an eye-opener for me.
I was driving back to Seattle alone from San Diego, and I stopped at a fast-food place along the way. The employees were mostly Latine young men, with one white guy, one white girl, and an older indigenous Mexican or Central American woman working the cash register.
The guys were bantering in Spanish, and the white guy was holding his own pretty well, while the white girl seemed to have trouble keeping up. I gave the cashier my order in my very halting Spanish, and she tolerantly spoke very slowly and carefully to me, to make sure I could follow her.
All went very smoothly, and as I turned to leave, the girl said something to me. I don’t remember exactly what, except it was about how poor our Spanish was, compared to the guys, but I joked back, “Because we’re gringas, I guess.”
The temperature in the room immediately dropped into freezer range. The cashier was so shocked that she switched from Spanish into English, and demanded, “Where did you learn that word?”
I stumbled around, finally answering, “From TV”.
I still don’t know exactly what happened there. Maybe “gringa” has different connotations to different people, or maybe I was oblivious to a cultural line that I overstepped.
But I made it all the way out of my childhood without tripping the “Where did you learn that word?” switch, only to run headlong into it in my 50s.
zhena gogolia
@thalarctosMaritimus: I think that like “shiksa,” it’s a much more offensive word to native speakers.
thalarctosMaritimus
@zhena gogolia: I think you’re right about that, but there does seem to be a wide range of opinions. Some native speakers I’ve asked see nothing offensive at all; others are like it’s more ambiguous.
At any rate, I have no need to say it, and seeing how strongly it landed, I’m inclined to stay away from it.
WaterGirl
@Jim Appleton:
oops, gave the game away!
karen gail
One that always brings back memories of childhood and car rides “if I have to stop this car” and “he touched me.”
I remember the first time I heard, “children say in public what parents say in private” at the time it made no sense being 10 years old and watching my cousins fight using swear words. Over the years I have said that same phrase or thought it when listening to children spout things that turn adults faces red.
Glidwrith
Apparently, when I was 4 or 5, my mother referred to her father as “the dirty old man”.
One day, Grandpa and wife came for a visit. I opened the door and hollered, “Mom! It’s the dirty old man!”
OldDave
Once upon a time was shopping with the then 4..5 year old daughter (she turned 46 today, so 40+ years ago). We wandered into a gift card shop, and she saw a large cardboard cutout of Kermit. Joyously she loudly exclaimed “Dad! Look! It’s Kermit the Fuck!”
mrmoshpotato
Hahahaha!
billcoop4
Late to the party but ..
I was 10, playing with my best friend Mike, outside one Spring Saturday afternoon. Dad was in the garage doing the one and only DIY project he ever did — or tried to do: something to fix the steps and shelves in our two car garage (of the suburban center hall colonial house I lived in).
Dad was hammering and suddenly hit his thumb. Of course, one never hits a thumb when tapping in a little nail to get it set — one hits a thumb on the money shot.
Dad let loose with the loudest “SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIt” I’ve ever heard. I believe it’s continuing somewhere on the IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII in some alternate universe.
I turned to Mike and said, “Cool! Dad knows that word!”
BC
Another Scott
@billcoop4: Longtime no-see BC4. Post more often.
But please be careful with too many characters strung together without spaces. It breaks the right margin on phones. (I’ll let WaterGirl know so she can fix it.)
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
mrmoshpotato
@Another Scott: DAMN! That’s some breaking of the margins!
billcoop4
Sorry, looked fine for me.
And that was the short version of Dad’s exclamation!
BC
Kent
When our middle daughter was about 2 or 3 we were in the produce section of the HEB grocery store in Waco TX with her riding in the cart.
She spies a little old lady carrying some sort of a chihuahua in a shoulder bag with the dog’s head poking out and starts jumping up and down and shouting gleefully at the top of her voice:
“LOOK MAMA, A MOUSE!’ “LOOK MAMA, A MOUSE!!”
No honey, it’s just a little dog” my wife whispers to her trying to hush her!”
NO MAMA, IT’S A MOUSE!!!” she kept shouting “IT’S A MOUSE!!!
Meanwhile all the customers in the produce section are looking around with horror and concern about mice running around in the produce department and the produce manager is rushing over to see what the fuss is about. And the poor old lady is scampering quickly away in shame.
And I can’t stop laughing at my wife’s expense as I pretend not to be with her.
Snarki, child of Loki
It has been my life’s work to teach toddlers to slam their empty sippy-cup on their high-chair tray, while loudly proclaiming “HIT ME AGAIN, BARKEEP!”
It has not been popular with parents.
Thor Heyerdahl
Really late to the thread.
The Falkland Islands War began when I was 6. However when I was telling my older cousins about the war, they apparently kept asking me where the war was because I kept saying “fuckland”.
Central Planning
My wife and I would take turns in the bath with our toddlers. At one point one of our sons didn’t want to take a bath with her because he thought she broke off her penis and didn’t want her to break off his.
One of them also decided to just happily repeat “Dammit!” as they played with toys.
Marcia Illingworth
@Another Scott: Dear Lord, please let it follow a different path, and not join up with another system! We haven’t found all of our missing yet! Appalachia isn’t built for hurricanes!
dnfree
Way late, but this reminds me of a time we were driving slowly around some neighborhood looking for a friend’s house when a group of maybe 5- and 6-year-olds ran down the street at full speed. Hot on their heels was a smaller boy, maybe 3, running as fast as he could and yelling “Sons of bitches, wait for baby!”
jame
@Fraud Guy: My granny told me and my sister that most men weren’t worth a fart in a whirlwind. She was right.
BQuimby
I must have been about 7 and, as usual, was getting constant crap from my 2 older brothers. It got so intolerable to me, punishment be damned, I thought I would say something so bad, so awful to push back at them. I knew most of the swear words, but this had to be epic, shocking and soooooo bad.
While I had no idea what ‘feminine hygiene products were’ commercials came on about feminine hygiene, everyone would get hugely embarrassed and wildly uncomfortable. So in my mind, the word ‘feminine’ must be really, really bad. After one too many brutal teasing/bullying from my brothers, I took a defiant deep breath, stood up an yelled, ” you are a bunch of feminines!” (of course, pronouncing it incorrectly. As I waited for THE punishment for my horrible insult, there was a pause and everyone just laughed at me. I was so confused.
Robert
Years ago I was debugging some custom software at the client’s site. Also, at the time, I had a 3-year at home. At one point I found the bug, realized that I was the one who had created it, and said out loud, “Oh poo.” The guys who were in the office at the time were both ex-Navy and usually peppered every sentence with “fuck” or “fucking.” They looked at each other, amazed, and one said to the other, “Oh Reginald, if I’m not mistaken I believe he has found his error.”
David T
Canadian cousins at the dinner table with their three young children explaining the birds and the bees to them in rather clinical terms. After hearing the very dry description of intercourse, one of the kids exclaimed “You and daddy did that three times!”
WaterGirl
@dnfree: Laugh out loud funny!
WaterGirl
@dnfree: I can’t stop laughing.
@David T:
Too funny.
Jado
Four year old daughter LOVES animals. We are a non-pet household. She states that when she gets older, she will have a dog. Wife agrees, when she is a grown up and has her own place she can get a dog. She wonders about getting a dog while still living with us. Wife says, no, if you’re living in the house there is a no pet rule.
She thinks for a minute, and then asks, “Well, what if you’re dead?”
Priorities, people. Gotta have priorities…
Jado
When Sonnyboy was a toddler, he had trouble with pronunciation of some words. He was also obsessed with large trucks and trains. Sometimes he was focused on dump trucks. Unfortunately, he had trouble with the P sound, and the TR sound often came out like an F sound. So, dumP TRuck came out sounding like….dum Fuck.
My brother-in-law laughed so hard, he wanted to make it into a ringtone for his phone
Tinare
Late to this, but my grandmother had quite the potty mouth and swore casually a lot. My mom would tell the story of my grandmother complaining about my uncle’s choice of words by unironically saying, “I don’t know why he has to use that goddamned language, doesn’t he know it sounds like hell?”
Trivia Man
@Phylllis: my parents NEVER swore, not even Damn. Unless my dad was telling a joke, then he refused to make any concession at all. F bombs and all. Cue his immediate defensive disclaimer: BUT THAT IS HOW THE JOKE GOES!!! I cant change it!
Jado
@Jacel: This drives parents nuts. My child had “Foboda”. My neighbor’s child had “Huckle” Neither of them could ever explain what those words meant.
Happy Smiling Guy (fka boatboy_srq)
WAY late to this, BUT:
My parents were an amazingly happy couple. I think they were made for each other. But it didn’t start out that way: Dad was smitten with Mum from the moment he discovered that girls exist, but Mum while she liked Dad wasn’t very impressed because she thought he “lacked backbone” as she put it. Fast forward to postwar US, and Dad is home on leave (he’d fought in WW2, and at the time of this story had been in Korea with the negotiators before coming home) taking Mum out for a drive somewhere. Somebody cuts them off, and Dad quite unthinkingly cusses out the other driver in language only seamen know. Mid-vitriol, he remembers Mum is there – and as he turns to apologize, my very impressed Mum looks him in the eye and says “Yes.” “What?” “Yes, I’ll marry you!”
WaterGirl
@Jado: Wow. Kind of harsh! I laughed, I hope you did, too.
WaterGirl
@Happy Smiling Guy (fka boatboy_srq): That is a sweet, funny, touching story. Thanks for sharing it.