Another Parental Milestone

Dateline: Last Wednesday, 5:30am. I'm up in my office, which is on the 3rd floor of my house, "working" when I hear the pitter-patter of 9-year-old feet coming up the stairs. In a moment my older daughter is standing behind me.

"Daddy," she said, "the living room television is not working and there is a cable down in the back yard."

I try to mentally process this information but, hey, it was 5:30am and, as I've noted before in this Blog, I'm not the brightest bulb on the tree. What comes through my mind are a series of Caveman-like short sentences: House getting new siding. Workmen unhook cable. TV not working. TV not working because workmen unhook cable.

I pull up CBS.Sportsline on the 'net. Am distracted. College hoops. Jeez, Maryland kicked Hampton's ass. MEAC sucks. Huh? What were we talking about?

"Daddy, can you fix it?"

I say some more short sentences to myself: Fix what? Oh, yeah - TV. Last theory wrong. Cable not unhooked. Cable provides TV and Internet. Internet working, so TV should work.

What I want to say to my daughter at this point is the following: "Honey, I am certain that the cable coming into our home is not disconnected, so we'll need to consider some alternate theories as to why the living room television is inoperational. To help diagnose the problem, I would like you to check the television in my bedroom to see if it is working properly. That will help us determine whether the problem is a systemic one from our cable television service, or whether it is a decreased functionality of the living room television itself."

That is what I wanted to say to her, but that is not what I actually said to her.

What I actually said, given that it was 5:30am, I'm not very smart and I was distracted by reading an Internet article about sports, were another series of incomprehensive Caveman sentences: "Um ... can you, uh, go into my room? The TV. You know, uh. Turn it on. Um ... uh. Hmm. Can you see if ..."

My 9-year-old finished the sentence: "... if it is as fucked up as the television downstairs?"

Silence.

My automatic response, which I was somehow able to choke back, was to ask her to repeat what she just said. Instead I turned around and, for the first time during this entire conversation, looked at her. There she stood, innocent, smiling, pleasantly waiting for my directive -- should she see if my bedroom television was fucked up, too, or not?

"Uh, honey, can you ... uh ... think of another way to say that?"

For a moment, she seemed perplexed at my question. "You want me to see if the television is as screwed up as the downstairs ..."

"How about checking to see if my bedroom television is working properly?," I said.

"Okay, Daddy," and she dutifully bounded down the stairs to find out.

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It is now a week later and, thankfully, I still haven't received the feared telephone call from my daughter's Catholic school principal. It hasn't come yet, but I know now that it will.

"Mr. Buckman," he will say. "We are concerned about your older daughter's answer to question number six on her math test today."

"Yes?," I will say.

"The question asked her 'How much is 15 times 62?' Your daughter's response was, 'How the fuck should I know?'"

I will wait a few seconds before saying anything, pretending to be thoughtful. I will then express serious concern for my daughter's choice of language, and I will show complete sensitivity for the matters at hand.

And then I will blame her mother for teaching her to talk like that.

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Out of the Mouth of Babes

Recently I received the following email from Beth W., who is the wife of my good buddy Mark F.:

Olivia [their 4-year-old daughter] and I went to the library and she decided to "read" the titles of the Maisy books by looking at the covers - pretty logical. One "title" Olivia saw at the library today and very loudly announced was this: "Maisy drives a hooker!"

Maisy Rides a Crane was the actual title.

I was so proud of MYSELF for not losing it right there. Unfortunately, I DID ask her, "What did you say?"

After she repeated it I said, "Oh, that is a crane, Sweetie. 'Maisy Rides a Crane' is the title."

Upon receiving Beth's email, my mind immediately locked on to a story involving my own daughter, Phoebe.

When Phoebe was first learning to read about 3 years ago, she practiced by sounding out many of the words she saw around her until, by context, she'd "guess" what the word was. Results were less than perfect. For example, one night we were sitting at the dinner table. In front of me was a 2-liter bottle of Pepsi. Phoebe saw the brand name on the bottle and began sounding it out, one letter at a time. "P. P. P. Pe. Pe. Pep." Suddenly she stopped, looked at the 2-liter bottle, then looked at me and made her guess with complete confidence: "Beer!"

I thought this was so damned insightful (the idea that it must be beer because it was big and in front of Daddy) that I immediately left the dinner table and shot out an email to various friends and family recounting the story. My buddy Bill R. obviously was at his computer when it arrived and it only took him about 5 minutes to respond in kind.

"That's nothing," Bill shot back. "Last night, me, Lisa [his wife], Henry [his 10-year-old son] and a friend of Henry's went to dinner at a local restaurant. During dinner, Henry casually mentioned that he hated the New York Yankees. I, of course, was pleased [Bill, as discussed elsewhere in this Blog, is a Red Sox fan], but Lisa was mortified.

"Henry," Lisa gently reprimanded him. "We don't use the word 'hate' in this family. 'Hate' is the worst word."

"Without missing a beat, and with complete seriousness, Henry's friend spoke up: 'I thought 'motherfucker' was the worst word.'"

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