My Mind...

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...wanders.

Swearing Redux

Three different people have openly called me out.

Shit, piss, fuck, cunt...these are the words with which the the road to disappointing your friends and family is paved.

I have no intention of teaching my son to swear. I don't think it's cute or funny when a three-year old says shit.

He's going to hear bad words, probably sooner than I did - and I learned so early I don't even remember how old I was when I first heard someone say fuck. (It's all uncle Eddie's fault...he's 6 years older, so when I was only 10 I was regularly exposed to the world of a 16 year-old in the late 1970s...and that's all I'm gonna say about that.)

What I was trying to say (apparently I was unconvincing) was that of all the concerns I have about Jack's future, swearing is way down the list.

I'm not sure what, exactly, bothers people so much about potty language. It's not like swearing is the kind of thing that can keep a kid out of college (unless, of course, he swears at someone). Hell, swearing got Joel Goodson into Princeton. (There I go, defending swearing again.)

Seriously, I'm not condoning swearing amongst toddlers. Or even pre-teens. But teenagers, in any country in the world, are going to hear swear words. What's a parent to do? I accept it, and I plan to be an active participant in my son's life. When he says those words I won't over-react and wash his mouth out with soap (does anyone actually still do this?), or yell at him. I plan on helping him understand what's meant when people say these things, that words are almost never to be taken lightly, that you should mean what you say.

I can pretty much guarantee that even prince William has heard his share of people use unprincely language. In England, swearing is almost the national pastime...and unlike the U.S. they have a seriously long past time...they invented that damn language and they swear like, well, drunken Englishman.

Dog Days

It’s the middle of July and the only thing I want to see in the high 90’s are fastballs, but the warm summer is hitting its stride (just like the Cubs ) as we approach the All-Star game and the temperature is a near-record 96 degrees.

I’ve started reading three different books in the last week and I’ve put them all down. Between Jack, work, and day-to-day distractions (it’s amazing how quickly laundry, mail and un-returned phone calls can pile up) I don’t seem to be able to focus on anything for more than ten seconds – books, movies, conversations, even sleep exist in a world of fits and starts and seemingly endless beginnings without a single conclusion (it’s a near-miracle I can finish this sentence).

I still have an uncanny ability to amass scraps of paper with notes for current and future projects. Receipts, envelopes, the corners of newspapers are scrawled in barely-legible pen scratchings, occasionally disintegrating in the pockets of jeans tossed into the hamper and jackets hung in closets months ago.

The summer makes me lazy. I know I’m supposed to love it. As a Chicagoan I’m almost obligated to look forward to these balmy (muggy, sticky, sultry) days and nights as if they only come once a decade like some constantly deferred birthday party. But I don’t. I prefer it cooler, rainier, greyer; maybe it’s my eastern European lineage. Not all the time. But if I had my way it would be 58 degrees with passing fronts of enormous clouds, clouds as big as entire states stacked like plumes of chimney smoke.

Tomorrow it’s supposed to “cool off” to 89 degrees.

October can’t get here soon enough.