Grafitti Artist

(Originally posted at Rational Jenn)

The other day, Ryan asked me how to spell "ass." Okay, let me back up.

A week ago, we were in the waiting room of the dance studio while Morgan was having her ballet class. One of the other moms was telling a story about how someone wrote a "bad word that means 'butt'" on the wall.

Well, Ryan was naturally intrigued! I mean, who wouldn't be? What was the word? What could it be? Why was it Bad? The mom was visibly embarrassed as it was evident she had forgotten Ryan's presence when she told the story. He kept bugging me about it later, so I told him: Ass.

See, we don't do Bad Words as such around here. There are Rude Words that we only reserve for use at home (or, usually, in the car!). But they are not Bad Words. Well, they weren't Bad until the other day, that is.

So I explained that "ass" is one of those Rude Words. No problem.

But then he asked me how to spell it the other day and I told him. 'Cause you need to know how to spell stuff, right? We then meandered into an interesting discussion about the quirkiness of the English language and talked about "as" and "ass" and other things, too. I was amused by his request, but didn't think too much of it at the time.

Except . . . now the word "ASS" (with the second "S" writtten backwards) has been scrawled on the family room wall above the sofa! The letters are about a foot tall!

Fortunately, it's in pencil, so he'll be able to erase it tomorrow. :o)

I am just DYING with the hilarity of it. I actually noticed it several hours ago, but didn't mention it because I wanted to show it to Brendan (despite the height of the letters, the pencil is so faint that it's not immediately noticeable).

Sometimes when the kids do stuff that they shouldn't, I'm often about 50% amused, 50% upset/annoyed. This time I'm about 95% amused. Although I predict he'll try to blame it on Morgan, who has an alibi--me.

And I was once worried that he might not be inspired to learn to read or write!