Reply #16: My kid got busted when he was in first grade [View All]

[jdsmith]

The teacher, as teachers do, said something completely nonsensical, and my son said, "Bullshit." (That's how we talked at home, and we'd forgotten to tell him about at-home talk and not-at-home talk.) So the teacher told him that nice children did not talk like that. He considered that for a minute and thoughtfully said, "No shit."

We were called in for one of those conferences that severely test your ability to keep a straight face. (We did, however, quickly bring him up to speed on the different vocabularies that we all have to choose from as the occasion or setting dictates.)

Now that kid's all grown up and is the third person in the family either possessing or working on advanced degrees in English or Communication. That, we like to think, is the result of letting the kids know that there are lots of different ways of talking and writing real good.

(By the way: two people have already wondered whether people were intending to be sarcastic when they wrote "Fuck, no" and the like. Are little winkies REQUIRED when we're being sarcastic? Is this a sign that we're not communicating well enough with words?)