blue streak

We live next to a hospital, so the sights and sounds of ambulances, fire trucks, and police cars are a daily part of the background of our lives (may I also point out that the view from my bedroom window frames a lovely copse of trees on the hospital grounds – if it weren’t for the sirens, you could believe you were in the suburbs. Really.). In the same way, living in a house with me provides another auditory backdrop – swearing, particularly if I’m driving, or there’s too much stuff piled at the front of the refrigerator that falls out when you open it, or someone accidentally hits me in the head with a matchbox car turned projectile. I’ve tried, I’ve really tried to hold my tongue since G started not just talking but actively annexing everything he hears into the live Petri dish of his vocabulary – but everyone has to have one vice, don’t they?

Baby B, on his trip to North Carolina a couple of weeks ago, picked up his own first word, “uh-oh,” which he generally uses in its appropriate context, but sometimes just drops into thin air all on its own, like a mild interjection. He’s probably right, given any set of circumstances at any given time around here.

I thought I had escaped with time for good behavior the day that G, playing with a few of his cars in the back of the living room, exclaimed “Oh, CRACK!” loudly but firmly several times when his cars had an unfortunate collision.

But then, last week, we were driving to the babysitter, along a main city artery which had shut down to one very slow-moving lane of downtown traffic because of a giant Lincoln, with its right blinker on, trying to parallel park in a space that was clearly too small for it. Of course this caused the left lane of traffic, annoyed by the stupidity of trying to park in rush hour traffic, and buoyed by the sheer good luck of being in the other lane, to increase its collective speed precipitously, and for each car to pull up just close enough to the car in front to obviate the possibility of letting in any stranded cars in the right lane. In response, the right lane cars also turned on their blinkers and started honking madly, except when the traffic light changed, leaving enough room for one car to accelerate, rev its engine, and zoom out into the flow of traffic. This was almost always the car directly behind the Lincoln trying to park, which then would have – in theory -- left enough space for the car to attempt to pull into the parking place, realize the error of its ways, and drive on. But instead, the next car would pull up immediately into the space vacuum and block the Lincoln, again. It’s like Sisyphus on Georgia Avenue.

We were not running late, so my own annoyance meter was running pretty low – when the fifth or sixth car pulled right up behind the Lincoln, I think I said something like, ‘oh, come on.’

At which point G, from the backseat: “Well, dammit.”

(S pointed out later that, considering my mouth when I’m driving, it could have been a lot worse).

I stifled a giggle, and said, “What do you mean by that word, honey?”

In the new, instructive tone he’s using for everything these days, he said, “That’s the word you use when somebody gets in your way and it’s really annoying.”

It’s hard to fault him for his logic.

“Hmm,” I said. I don’t really like that word. “Do you think we could use another one instead, like kaplooey?”

He thought about it for a second. “No, mommy,” he said. “Dammit’s better.”

Again, logic.

Eventually we settled on a word of G’s own invention that sounds vaguely French, which seemed appropriate. It was really more for the sake of the conversation than anything I’ll bring up again all that often, under the assumption that either the dammits will go their own way, or they won’t, without my highlighting.

Later that day, I noticed a funny thing about our bedroom door. Our house had a marbled history before we bought it, and while the renovations (none of them to our personal credit) are wonderful, bringing the house back to its original modest shine, occasionally a little message from the difficult years will wend its way to the surface. Even under several fresh coats of expertly-applied paint, it turns out that in the late afternoon light you can still see that someone, years ago, carved the words A_ _ and B_ _ _ _ with some kind of sharp object across the front of our bedroom door. It’s a loopy, heavy scrawl, and seems meant rather personally, whether the two words are connected or not. I think it’s weirdly charming – like our own archeological nameplate – if I am the B_ _ _ _, does that make S the A _ _?

But it’s clearly something we’ll have to deal with before G starts to read.