Thursday, July 08, 2010

Toddler blasphemy, refrigerator magnets and giant dildos

I have a foul mouth.  I enjoy a good "motherfucker!" as much as the next person.  But if I had to clean up my act, I think the hardest expression to wipe from my repertoire would be "Jesus Christ."

It's definitely my epithet of choice.  Sometimes I use the full name, sometimes it's "Jesus H.", or some other variation thereof.  It's just habit.

I know it's offensive to some as violative of the commandment against taking the name of the deity in vain.  But a) he's not my deity, and b) I think that taking the name of God in vain means using God as an excuse to commit bad acts, not exclaiming "Jesus Christ!" when you stub your toe.  Personally, I think that God, if S/He exists, has bigger fish to fry than the harmless use of words.

Anyway.

Notwithstanding my enjoyment of enthusiastic cursing, I definitely draw the line at doing it in front of my children (or anyone else's, for that matter).  We don't even say "fart" in front of Zeke.  If you pass gas, you have "tooted."  And I try to limit my use of "Jesus Christ" in front of Zeke as well, though sometimes it slips out accidentally.  But I know he has heard it.

So today we were putting a sticker on the most recent prize chart, in which Zeke is rewarded for going to bed by 8:30 and for using the bathroom.  Seriously, I'm so fucking sick of changing two sets of diapers.

Holding the chart to the fridge are two magnets, a commemorative one of the Hawaiian royal family's crest that I got at the Iolani Palace, and one that a friend gave me off his fridge when I saw it at a party and instantly fell in love with it.

Zeke started playing with the magnets, at first just interested in lifting them off the fridge and then watching them get sucked back onto the metal door.  Then he looked at the Jesus magnet and said, "who's that, Mama?"

Uhhhhh.

I didn't know what else to say, so I just blurted, "It's Jesus."  Then I kind of braced myself for the inevitable questions to follow.

"Jesus?"

"Yes."

But amazingly, he didn't ask any follow-up questions, like "who is Jesus?" or something like that, which is a good thing because I honestly don't know what I would have said.

But Zeke never forgets a name or a face.  He remembers everyone and knows everyone's name.  He's like the Otter of his preschool class, only without the giant dildo or the seduction of Dean Wormer's wife.

So while he didn't immediately recognize the name, at some point, someone will utter it, either reverently or not, and Zeke will undoubtedly say, "oh, the man on Mama's fridge!"

In which case I imagine I will have some 'splainin' to do.

2 comments:

  1. Michelle L.7:37 PM

    Might I suggest that you just give Jesus a last name and pronounce his first (and last) names in Spanish and be done with it. If you are lucky, Zeke will think he's just a particularly light-skinned Hispanic man with a fondness for robes for a few years and by then you can explain JC to both kids.

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