Say What??

"Teacher, she just said the 's' word!"

I can't tell you how many times I hear that sentence at school. Now the tricky thing is, in first grade there are many 's' words. Here are a few: stupid, shut up, sex, ...

Speaking of sex, a few years ago I was talking to my class about similarities and differences. I had a boy and a girl come to the front of the room, and the class raised their hands and pointed out things that were the same or different between the two. My really smart boy raised his hand and said, "they're different sexes." Of course, no other first grader knows that sex can be another name for gender (or even know what gender means!) so the room filled up with giggles and whispering. I then had to explain that sex can mean male or female. I often wonder how many first graders went home that day and said, "We learned what sex means!"

Now, back to first grade cuss words. Here's one I heard the other day that is new to me: the 'w' word! I had to ask the boy who was tattling to tell me what the 'w' word stands for, and he meekly whispered in my ear, "whatever." Oh. I did not know that was a bad word. Whatev... I mean, okay.

It is nice to know that there is still some innocence in the world. Last year, a boy came in from recess with the tattling look. If you have been around children at all, you will recognize the tattling look. Their eyes are open wide, a mix of surprise and concern on their little faces, their mouth half open, with their index finger pointed in the general direction of the culprit. Anyway, this boy came in and said, "Teacher, I had to call this other boy a retard! I just had to! He was going around calling other kids affols!" Me - "Calling other kids what?" Boy - "affols!" At this point, I realize that the boy initially doing the name calling either had a lisp, or the boy in my class was not hearing clearly. At any rate, "affol" was actually a different word, a true cuss word. It just happened to be a cuss word that this innocent little boy had never heard.

So now, when a girl comes up to say, "he just said the 'f' word!" I can calmly react with the knowledge that she is probably referring to fart.