'Miss' [we are reading the Owl and the Pussycat] 'what does pussy mean?'
'Er... it's a cat. You know, like pussycat...'
'But my brother calls me a pussy. He says it doesn't mean cat.'
Cowardly, I tell him I don't know. It's a bit early to get onto misogyny, dysphemism and gender stereotyping. I would also like to strangle his brother, the little shit, as he's the most charming little kid you could ever hope to meet - what is he doing calling him names like that?
It's a big ugly world but in this job sometimes you can't help wishing you could protect innocence from experience.
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16 comments:
Well, yeah, but kids always call each other names like that. I distinctly remember calling my brother a "dildo", without being entirely sure what it meant. It's half the fun.
Also, when we first heard it, we assumed that "fuck" must mean "poo", as that was the most offensive thing we could think of.
The 18th-century lexicographer Francis Grose, in his Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, defined "c**t" as "a nasty word for a nasty thing". Maybe you can propel your charges into decades of misogyny and therapy with that one.
Or you could just tell him that his brother's a niker.
Del, so true, you're probably right. Hahaha! Sweet.
What's a dildo...?
Tim, ha! I'll get Johnny Apple round to sort him out.
My brother told me that holding your little finger up at someone was rude.
I did it to him for years.
@tim footman
True, but Grose collected lots of other wonderful words for it as well. Including:
BOTTOMLESS PIT
BUCKINGER'S BOOT
EVE'S CUSTOM-HOUSE
MISS LAYCOCK
MOTHER OF ALL SAINTS
TUZZY-MUZZY
If kids all read Grose, they'd have the most fantastic vocabularies.
Insults de jour in our house for little sister are 'twat' and 'arse' which are at least pleasingly anglo-saxon.
I always went for classically immature when insulting my little brother. Mr.Poopypants was my favourite. When I heard it used again in Naked Gun years later, I nearly died with laughter.
Good a time as any to break out my favourite piece of erotic Victorian writing:
"I could see the lips of her plump pouting cunny, deliciously feathered, with soft light down, her lovely legs, drawers, stockings pretty boots, making a tout ensemble, which as I write and describe them cause Mr Priapus to swell in my breeches."
From a book called Sub-Umbra, or Sport Amongst the She-Noodles. So there you go: she-noodles. There's also a book from around the same time called Lady Pokingham: Or They All Do It. You hear me? THEY ALL DO IT.
B - hahaha! hahahahaha! Excellent. I'm going to see if the idea catches on at school.
Quink, I know from teaching TEFL that there are about 500,000 words in the English language, and about half a million more technical and scientific terms, most of which are for ladybits.
Realdoc, in the non-PC seventies insults used to revolve around mental disabilities - remember spaz? We've moved onto body parts - is that progress?
Del, Mr Poopypants sounds like the title of an Enid Blyton book.
SHE-NOODLES! How marvellous. Emordino, I thank you.
Me and my brother avoided calling each other names.
I'm sure it was to help compensate for the trauma resulting from our parents that called us "Snorkel-pigs".
Kids are sneaky - I think he was just toying with you.
Dildo is a funny word without considering what it means.
As is pussy come to think of it.
I don't know where they get it from - imagine my abject horror today when my very excited Son of Romo leaving his new friends house shouted back at his friend - in front of his friend's mother who I don't really know (and probably won't ever get to know now as she has probably already alerted the social services):
"those balls is as smooth as eggs!" in a faux American accent. HIDEOUS. MORTIFIED. Then - then she asked me "what did he say?" And I had to pass it off as something he may have seen on an advert for a childs toy on tv..or something" as he then delighted in shouting it out again. GAAAAH. She was quite nice about it and said that her son kept talking about willy's, bums and balls all the time. La la la.
It's great being a boy. Dildo!
Hello, Shila Shila and Cult Jam - Snorkel-pigs is cute. If a bit twisted.
Lottie, some kids do, but it's usually easy to tell - 7 year olds are not very sophisticated.
Billy, right, they're not really instrinsically sexy words when you think about it. They're a bit like names for the seven dwarves.
RoMo - HAHAHAHA! Hilarious!
I'm so glad sometimes I'm not a parent.
Del - have you seen The Law of the Playground?
http://www.playgroundlaw.com/cgi-bin/browse.pl?sid=5654
Not totally related, but have you seen this?
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