Foul Mouth

Yesterday I went to see the movie “Julie and Julia.” It was an adorable movie that had me smiling through nearly the entire thing, and laughing out loud (I feel sorry for the people sitting around me, as I did, unwillingly, snort a few times) at the many humorous moments in the show.

There were two beautiful and admirable love stories portrayed. I love it when married people are mostly happy and stay happy (all the while working through the curve balls life throws at us). And they do things for one another that encourage happiness.

What I didn’t like was Hollywood’s need to use a certain profanity that I can’t even read or it sticks into my mind like glue, thus wanting to infiltrate my personal vocabulary and come spewing out uncontrollably (more on that to come later).

It bothered me even more that the person who said it was living in a generation of time where I didn’t think that word was probably even used as widely as it is in today’s society...so why put it in at all? I asked my mom if she was familiar with that word being used commonly during that era (no, I am not trying to age my mom...she does that beautifully on her own. It just so happens that she was alive during that time. Maybe she was only 10, but she was alive...maybe the worst word she used at that age was “shut-up.”).

This opened up a whole new realm of vulgarities that I have not heard my mom ever say before, such as:

Butt

Crap

Screwed

Pissed Off

Sucked

Okay, so, she only said “butt,” but, whatever.

As a child those words were some of the forbidden words we were not allowed to say (please add additional ones in the comment section if I have forgotten any that your mother forbade). These are so very common in today’s society, that they do not change the rating of a movie and I often times hear cute little 5 year olds saying them regularly. They still offend my mother. I love her for that.

I like that when my mom came over the other day to watch my kids, she was offended by “Madagascar 2” and their flippant use of crude words. And shortly after Abi was born and she was visiting me in Boston, she turned off “A Bug’s Life” because they were talking about poo. She is wonderful! I truly mean that. I wish that there were people like her editing the movies nowadays. We would have nothing to cover our ears about, and nothing to fear when our kids started quoting lines from a movie while eating dinner at an acquaintances home (although, it is INCREDIBLY adorable when they start sining songs from Annie, a la Abi).

Interestingly enough, before going to the movie, I had admitted to my mother that I had cussed at Abi just that afternoon (yet another unsuccessful moment in potty training). I needed my mother’s stamp of assurity that I hadn’t scarred my beautiful little daughter for life.

I got a gleaming gold stamp.

My mother proceeded to tell me that she never used profanities until she became a mother. Oh, how true that is! I can count on my hand the number of times I had ever sworn before I had children (once at Todd for being a tease and once at a bee for stinging me). Now I find myself needing to use restraint at least daily (potty training reeks havoc on a mother).

I had to apologize to a friend the other day for using a profanity in front of his child. Let me set up the scene of the accident:

2pm, I had just finished cleaning the entire house. Vacuumed, dusted, straightened, folded and put away laundry, that kind of clean. I had sent the girls and the youngest of the boys I was watching downstairs to play in what I like to call the “wreck” room. Meaning...do whatever you want down there...I don’t care. You can’t see it from the living room, and I don’t have to step over the toys to get through the day. I love having an unfinished basement with young, potty-training children.

I walked into Connor’s room to encourage him and his friend to go down and watch a movie and play with the toys that I had just neatly arranged and put on the shelves (because we know that kids LOVE to play with toys in a clean toy room more than they do in a dirty one, but the idea of keeping the room clean to always enjoy it is another thing), when the sigh before my eyes had me fuming.

I yelled out, “What the hell happened in here?”

Bombs must have exploded in Connor’s drawers sending his clothes from one end of the room to the other. You couldn’t see the floor. Not kidding.

Then I felt bad.

I made them help me shove all of the clothes back in the drawers (not caring if they went into the proper drawer so angry that the clothes I had just spent all morning folding and neatly putting away were no longer looking as organized as I had made them to be and more angry because the time it took for them to pull them out of the drawers was 1/32 the amount of time for me to put them in there).

Of course, I know who the culprit was, as Connor is a clean freak and can’t stand for his room to be a mess. It was Abi. She is a mess maker..and so is Carly. They must have teamed up and done the damage together. I love them both. Terribly. But asking Abi to come help clean up right then would have only resulted in a good swat on her rear in front of the friend who just heard me cuss and the room taking 6 hours to get back into shape (Abi’s a singer and a dawdler and any project of the cleaning nature isn’t nearly as entertaining as the scene in the nursery from Mary Poppins...despite the fact that Abi does sing while cleaning...okay, so that IS a little entertaining and cute). I wasn’t ready for that, just yet.

I apologized to Connor’s friend who assured me he had heard much worse.

I felt better.

When the boys’ dad came to pick up his poor sons that I had ruined for life, I explained everything that happened and he just laughed confirming that he did, on more than one occasion, let foul words slip out of his mouth in front of his children.

I am not trying to justify my PG-13 rating. I would like to try to be a little more PG.

However, if I was PG, then I would be perfect.

If I was perfect, then I would be translated.

If I was translated, then who babysit all of the neighbors kids?

See, I didn’t say “raise my kids” or “fix dinner” or “clean my house” because Todd has proven on more than one occasion that he is very capable of doing these things on his own. And, maybe…..just maybe, he would find a wife that would be….rated G!!!!

I mean, honestly….I can’t just give up and let my children have perfection! They wouldn’t know happiness because they haven’t known misery (the kind I inflict when one wakes me from a nap). They wouldn’t know good health because they had never been flicked in the forehead for yelling too much.

My children need me just the way I am. And when my girls come to me one afternoon after having had a rough day with their own children, I can laugh with them and remind them too, that they survived it all, despite the things I said or did.

Oh goodness, Abi just came in and said, “Ow! There is something in my bum.” I was waiting for her to say “butt.” Good...it must not be in my common vocabulary enough for her to use it.

Thanks mom, for not scarring me for life and for teaching me that having a few minor imperfections makes it possible to laugh at ourselves and laugh with others when they experience the same things.