It's great when one never picked up the language of the street in one's home life. However, even the sweetest person is sometimes pressed to the extreme: the gerbil gripping, vise-like, on a finger while cleaning the cage; the bat that comes swooping in; the trip that resounds with the crack of a bone and sharp pain following - you know the stuff that might pop out.
What has amazed me over time, though, is how truly, remarkably creative and imaginative children's folks are. Even in the midst of shocking surprise or pain, the things that pop out are almost always appropriately mild. Perhaps we need to include this more often on our resumes...always language appropriate around kids and families!
Image: 'secret santa gift - woot!' www.flickr.com/photos/33580370@N02/4208793639
Keeping it clean at work isn't usually a problem (I've picked up a coworker's expletive of choice - "oh sugar") but after dropping heavy groceries on my foot at Publix and cursing up a creative storm I turned around to see, you guessed it, one of my storytime families, looking equal parts shocked and amused.
ReplyDeleteThis reminds me of the librarian (fictionalized and I can't remember which book) who used book titles as her swear words!
ReplyDeleteI nearly told an entire schoolful of fifth graders they should read Victoria Hanley's Violet Wings because it was about a kick-ass fairy. Last time I do that book talk unrehearsed...
ReplyDeleteToo true! Two other authors wrote about using the word "slithering" and another uses tongue twisters.
ReplyDeleteI had a french teacher who used to say "sac un papier!" as if she was swearing... it was years before her english-only-speaking husband caught on that it wasn't ;-)
ReplyDeleteMakes me think of the time I dislocated my kneecap at the library, and it wouldn't go back where it was supposed to. I told the circulation supervisor who was helping me that I really really wanted to swear, and she told me I could do so...QUIETLY.
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