Monday, January 26, 2009

Explicatives

My poll about blogging and the use of explicatives created an interesting little discussion in the Fruit-Cake household. I ::ahem:: tend to be more liberal with the cursing than my dear husband which I attribute to being an English Major because as a poet we were expected and encouraged to use language in any way we could to make a point, paint a picture, create rhyme etc.

Now that Jack is paying much closer attention to what we say I've had to get creative substituting other words where I would normally drop the f-bomb or something else I wouldn't want Jack to repeat at Group. (Oh the embarrassment!)

My favorite is 'sugar plum faeries' usually said like this "SUGAR... PLUM...FAERIES."

So here is the question: What do you say? What did your parents or friends or parent's friends say?

4 comments:

Kate said...

Spending six years working with kindergarten and pre-school age kids was remarkably effective in cleaning up my language. Other than the occasional "bloody hell" (a remnant of my first boyfriend that Field finds incredibly amusing) I don't really swear anymore.

While it is good to try to moderate your language (I like "frickin a" for some reason) kids will pick up these things and there isn't that much you can do about it. I was once standing with another teacher and a very sweet and soft spoken mother when her son (whom we were discussing and observing) said "Fuck." He wasn't that loud but it was very clear. We all just looked at each other and then proceeded to ignore it. That's really the best course of action when they're little whether they said something bad or you did.

FWIW my mother swore a lot when I was younger and I a) was not scarred by it and b) did not become a potty mouth.

Brenna said...

I think I remember my mom saying "fudge!!" "darn" "shoot"
Needless to say, I cannot curse like a sailor. My cursing tends to be pretty mild...which I guess it a good thing.

The Bliven Family said...

My parents never cussed...we didn't even say "FART" we said "fluffy"...which, I am proud to say, I have passed down to my son.

melaniet42 said...

I went through a non-cursing phase a while back and came up with my favorite substitute - "Cheesecake"! Try it out, it can be used in several different tones. People look at me funny when I use it, but hey, people always look at me funny.