“Is it going to take your children saying those words back to you before you clean up your mouth?” my Dad asked when my first child was learning to talk.  Well, the answer to that question is that apparently even that didn’t do the trick.  It’s not that I haven’t tried at times, and lately I really am trying to clean up my language, figuring it’s not very grandmotherly, not that this is an issue at the moment.  I’m just kind of preparing for possible future and want to be able to have some sense of decorum at weddings and baptisms and shit.

My first son was about seven years old, which made the other two boys four years old and three years old.  Life was chaotic and I quickly learned I was losing a household battle that only a mother of sons can fathom.  One day I totally lost my shit.  I threw a classic tantrum and used every conjugation of the word shit:

I’m not going to take this shit anymore.  I’m tired of this shit.  Look at this, there’s shit everywhere and nobody gives a shit but me.  It’s not even my shit, it’s everyone else’s shit, but I’m the one who has to clean up all this shit.  Just let the shit pile up, I don’t even give a shit anymore.  Al, you can clean up this shit from now on if you don’t like it, I’m done…

It was one of my finest tantrums.  There was only one problem.  As my Dad had predicted, my eldest son had started to say those words back to me.  I had recently given him an ultimatum that he was going to owe me a quarter for every time he said “shit.”  As my tantrum fizzled out, he waited just the perfect amount of time to make sure it was over, and then I heard his little seven year old voice calmly say, “Mom, you owe me two-fifty.”  My tantrum flared up one more time for me to tell him that I was the mother and I wasn’t going to pay him any two-fifty.  Here I was trying to make a point and he was working on his first grade money math, thinking “ka-ching” “ka-ching” “ka-ching.”

Al informed me that oh yes I would, and indeed I did.  I couldn’t help but smile as I handed over the cash.   The little shit had beaten me at my own game.