"Mommy, you're a JUICEBAG!"

If you've spent any time around me in real life, you'll know that I occasionally like to use the er, salty language. I am especially tied to the word "bitch" which I feel I have reappropriated in a feministy way and use to describe, well, just about everyone. In a child-free context, I use it a LOT in conversations with my husband. "Hey bitch, do you want to go to the grocery store?" "Bitch, please. I am not washing your long underwear AGAIN today." Something like that. I need to get a handle on it. I should go to a Bitches Anonymous meeting or something. However, I feel that my husband and I are both really good at not letting our...sentence enhancers leak in to our family life. Except for the rare time when I stub my toe or inflict some other kind of mind-numbing pain on myself, my kids have never heard me say anything more salty than "crap" or "shii--take mushrooms in a cream sauce" or "Jesus H. Christ on a rubber crutch."

So, imagine my surprise when my five year old comes running giggling into my bedroom yesterday while I was organizing my closet and goes, "Mommy, you're a JUICEBAG." Then he runs off giggling, not waiting around for me to respond. Juicebag? He can only mean "douchebag." Which is a word my husband and I reserve for only the most hardcore, nasty people we can think of, i.e., people who don't use signal lights, Republican strategists, certain academics, and the occasional meter maid. I am surprised that we have used this word in earshot of Sam, but know that we probably have. Our non-swearing policy is kind of like abstinence only education--it works in theory, but well, you know, sometimes you're just in the back of a Mitsubishi Montero, and you don't give a damn what they told you about purity last week....

So what do I do? Do I wash the kid's mouth out with soap? Hardly. I continued hanging up my scarves and then proceeded into the living room where Sam is blissfully playing with Legos. I mean to say something to him, tell him not to use the word "juicebag" at school, but I don't. I choose not to draw attention to it. Were I to draw attention to it, I have a pretty good idea that "juicebag" would suddenly become Sam's very favorite word because he has just enough of my DNA to make him the kind of rebellious little beast that would do such an abominable thing. Plus...and this is going to sound really horrible...it was really, really cute. A juicebag? Come on, that's cute. That's something that Will Ferrell would have his kid do on The Landlord video and millions of people would watch it and think it to be quite awesome.

So, I have a pseudo-swearing child who I can't bring myself to punish because I think the pseudo-swearing is fun. And I'm writing a blog about being a parent. Nice. Having reached my fill of irony today, I will be retiring.