At what age do kids stop racing across the house, holding their crotch, screaming “potty!!”? What’s up with the need to announce to the entire household, the need to eliminate? Yesterday, Kaleb did (drink) just that. He’s eight years old. What the hell? “What if I did that?” I asked James as he whizzed by. “I guess I’d be glad you were running.”
Kids are so bizarre. There’s about a million things they do during the course of a day that would be absolutely ludicrous to do as an adult. Having a conversation while spinning around, for example. Spitting a mouthful of broccoli right onto their dinner plate, making gagging noises and (drink) demanding juice to get the disgusting taste out. Shamelessly picking their nose with vigor and proudly producing a giant booger which they wipe on the sofa. Or eat. And you can never get kids to sleep when they're supposed to, but they fall asleep at the most random times in the most random places.
And how about talking to themselves? Cynthia is notorious for carrying on a detailed narrative of her actions. She often (drink) reports as if she’s creating a vlog. “Hey guys, I’m just eating some vanilla wafers and coloring a picture of a bunny. So yeah.” She says that - ‘so yeah’ - at the end of every commentary. Again, way too much YouTube.
This morning, she added a song to her dialogue. Usually, her songs are mostly gibberish, but today, I distinctly heard the lyrics, “Corona Virus sucks” sung to the tune of Three Blind Mice. She glanced up at me to (drink) see if I registered that she had said a bad word. "What?" she asked innocently, though I could tell she fully expected me to admonish her language. Instead I just said, "You're damn right it does." I'm not sure if she registered the additional "bad word" I threw into the mix, but she smiled, relieved she wasn't in trouble, and returned to her narrative.
Kids get away with a lot that is no longer acceptable as adults. They can wear (drink) a cape all day and it wouldn't be weird. They can ask you to wipe their ass (drink) or demand a bandaid for a non-existent cut. They will be the first to point out if you gained a couple pounds or are having a bad hair day. And for the most part, none of these things is particularly odd.
In our house, though, they don't get away with bad language. It's one of those things I just can't deal with - whether it's potty talk or mild curse words, or every once in awhile an F bomb from the boy. So, it was (drink) unprecedented for me to not only let Cynthia's blatant profanity slide, but to condone it, to some degree. She was right, though - the Corona Virus does, indeed, suck. There's really no other way to put it. And I, for one, am not about to censure the truth.