Breeding and Writing: Teaching your baby to swear
[admin / June 23rd, 2010 / Young Bright Things ]My child learned how to swear a week or two ago.
He’s one and a half.
About a month ago, he dropped something accidentally and exclaimed, “Oh, SHIT!”Â
Of course, he’s still mostly baby and not so clear on enunciation just yet, so those particular syllables sound exactly like various other phrases he uses daily, namely “See it,” “Wassup”Â, and “Sit”Â. We chalked it up to that, figuring maybe he was asking to see (i/e/, be given) the thing he’d just dropped.
Sure. Whatever lets us sleep at night, right?
Well, yeah, not so much. The Saturday before last, all illusions were shattered.
My husband was doing some laundry down the hall from our living room, where the kiddo rediscovered a zippered bag of blocks he’d loved before but lost to the couch cushion abyss. He can’t open said zippered bag, and therefore has to get help.
He said, “Daddy, blocks.”Â
The daddy in question said, “Hold on a minute, buddy, Daddy’s gotta do some clothes first.”Â
Kiddo: “Daddy, blocks now.”Â
Daddy: “I heard you, I said hold on. Just a second, “Ëœkay?”Â
Kiddo, slamming bag to his feet: “Daddy! Blocks, DAMN IT!”Â
Any pretense of moral integrity, gone. Whoosh. Watched it fly by past my hair…
But you know what you might have thought when you read that?
Not, “Oh, that kid should know better.” Probably not, “Wow, what a disobedient child that boy seems to be.”Â
Nope.
You probably thought, “Huh. They must curse in front of him. They should really try to watch that.” Possibly even, “Aww, that poor thing.”Â
I’ve thought it of others. In my less-parental days, I’ve judged them. I’ll admit it. At toddler age, nothing the son or daughter does is his or her own fault. The blame belongs to the parents, probably for a few more years, even. Everything is all my fault until he’s at least four or five. I see that coming. There will be school calls, I’m sure. (And given the other stories I’m not even going to tell you, it should be a hell of an adventure. But that’s not the point right now.)
You know what? Our characters are like that, too.
Anything we have our fictional folks say or perform is immediately ascribed to something that is in the author’s own realm of possibility. Anything we write is something we could do. Any opinion they express must be ours. We are exactly as evil as the people we manufacture out of thin air.
Aren’t we?
I think those of us who read enough fiction get it and can make the distinction, but the public at large? Nope. They see things as either autobiographical or flights of fancy which we wish we could live. (By the way, if you’re here and you know what a literary magazine is in the first place, you’re not among that category of readers. You’re safe.)
But say, for example, I write a hacksaw serial killer in as my protagonist, and even make you like and root for him. (Or her—wouldn’t that be cool? Jotting notes.) If I lend that story to a colleague at the office, she’s going to look at me differently for the rest of our professional relationship. She’s going to wonder—just wonder—whether she should be a little more careful around me and maybe not eat that last donut on the break room table.
If I show an abusive mom-and-daughter scene to my grandmother? She’ll say, “Oh, I didn’t know you felt that way about your mother. Why didn’t you ever tell me?”Â
If I write erotica, people will assume I’m a slut. Yet in reality, I didn’t lose my virginity until I was 22. Obviously, I spent that time reading—but that’s not what anyone would assume.
The first impression, unless you are submerged in the literary world yourself, is that the writer writes life. That some shred of the story is based in fact. That the mind of the difficult protagonist lurks hungrily in some dark corner of the author’s psyche, waiting for the chance to spring forth into real existence.
It’s the same with my literary babies as it is with the person whose diapers I change.
Yes, I’ve tinged them both (the person, not the diapers. Ew.) Yes, they came directly from me. Okay, so I swear in/around them, and that seeps into the color of those worlds.
For the record, he picked up “shit” because that—my stubbed-toe word of choice. My favorite word is actually George Carlin’s, but I can prevent it from slipping, and usually do. However, “shit” is what comes out when something”‘ sudden on TV, or a plastic elephant salutes into my ass on a kitchen chair, or I drop a glass and it shatters. “Shit” is for an accident, and I’m an insanely clumsy person. Believe me, he’s heard it. A lot.
And see?  I felt the need to say that. To add a disclaimer explaining my choice, my words, my actions. To tell you that, “No, I’m really a good person. I mean, yes, that happened, but here’s all the backstory so you will still respect me…”Â
And I didn’t even say “shit”—I’m telling you this stuff because he did.
Too often we are forced to apologize for our characters’ choices, story themes, topics, or dialogue.
Why?
Shouldn’t it just be that if people don’t realize it’s fake, screw them?
Or is there an uncomfortable truth to that whole alter-ego corner-lurker theory after all?
What do you think?
When you write, are you always in the story?
I’ve written some dark shit. I’d hope I’m not as fundamentally deranged as every character I can imagine. But obviously I’m still the person who thought that stuff in the first place then, aren’t I? And I could have (theoretically) chosen not to write those more troubling thoughts down for preservation. Right?
Who’s at fault?
The twisted author? Â The ignorant masses? The collective unconsciousness, the hive mind, the overextended self-help book section, the all day CNN reports of raped children and looted buildings? What makes dark things happen in a story, and are they real if they do?
Does fiction have a moral obligation to be responsible?
Or does it save us from everyday obligation and free our minds?
What say you?
Wow Tracy. All of this I’ve thought about a lot. It’s one of the things that tends to hold me back, “What if my dad read that?” “What if an uber-religious family member knew I wrote that?” Because, I know, people think whatever the writer writes, they must do, have done, want to do, will do. And that’s not even close to truth.
I think we, as writers, have a vivid imagination. I think we’ve soaked in everything around us, the good, the bad, the ugly, the beautiful (all of which is incredibly subjective and dependent upon where you live in the world). And then we mish-mash all of it together when we write. Some of our stories may be things that we’ve actually done, albeit on steroids, because how many writers really have sex with 5 men at the same time? Really? If you do, more power to you, but that’s not in the realm of my real life possibility. Would I write about it? Possibly. Have I engaged in sex? Well, yeah!
If Stephen King had cared that his readers were going to believe he did all the things he’s written, we wouldn’t have the wonderfully weird, bizarre and frightening stories he’s given us.
So, although it is true, readers think that, it’s just part and parcel of being a published writer. Isn’t it?
And that’s a long winded way of saying, people are responsible for what they read. If they don’t want to read it, they don’t have to buy it. We as writers have a responsibility to write well, tell stories and be true to ourselves.
It’s a release from the “real world” for all involved. And that’s my two cents.
Nice article by the way
First, what a great article Tracy. Second, I am sure it is just coming through from a past life memory.
Makes you wonder just what thoughts are in their minds at that age….”Stewie” comes to mind.
Also, you have a very bright kid…so the idea of him picking up on things is not surprising.
Now, when is the erotica due out?
Another excellent post, Tracy, and excellent questions.
I can so identity with everything here, and with Catherine’s comments. Every time I write, I face fear. There is always that voice “what will people think.” That’s something I continually try to fix.
Now that I have a little book coming into the world next year, that fear is compounded a thousand-fold. It is an incredibly brave and risky act to publish. It is an incredibly freeing and rewarding act to write without thought, without fear, of publication.
Our only responsibility, I think, it to write the best and the most honest work we can. Ultimately, ironically, the writing contract isn’t between the writer and the reader, it is between the writer and the work.
Yes, great article. For some reason I didn’t really get myself around the idea that I could write anything ANYTHING for a long time, probably not even fully till I got into Nabokov. I’d still guess that I haven’t written anything entirely uncolored by my personal outlook, but I’d love to. Maybe that’s my goal.
We can probably all (and I’m sure do to some degree already) benefit from the sort of misinterpretation you detail here. Casual readers who try to fit words back into writers’ heads probably carry much more interesting ideas of who those writers are than they might have otherwise.
To make you feel better? My first thought – hey, he used it right!
Mostly I write nonfiction, so the “did it really happen” question takes on a different meaning. When I do write fiction, it’s to try to work through/explain/think about situations I can’t have access to. Mostly, I can’t have access because they are the darkly, deeply personal things I imagine in other people’s lives.
So, do I worry about the moms of the kids I babysit for ever reading my story about a mother who drowns her kid? Yes.
You know, Tracy, I feel that way a lot, too. When I got my four stories into Pocket Smut Magazine, I told my mother. Her response was “Not really something you can just tell everyone, now is it? Won’t that look good when you submit a story somewhere else.” So, I called my father. Dad’s response was a little more… quiet. But you know, I am a writer. The point of what I do is to put some part of me out there. Why put myself out there and then not tell people about it? If I were worried, I’d use a pen name, right? Well, then, why did I tell my friend Jayson, in the AGLBTOA, that one of the stories was lesbian fantasy, when I wouldn’t tell my mother? And the list goes on.
I do that a lot with fiction. For me, Fiction is about exploring the emotions that you *don’t* feel or act on most of the time. You sit in the office and Bill and Joe really bother you, so you write fiction about Bob and James and then you get the emotion gone and you’re better. Or you’ve never climbed the Twin Peaks of Mt. Kilimanjaro*, so you make up a story where you’re mounting an expedition there. But there’s always part of me that wonders what everyone’s going to think when I get to Writers Group and hand out a story about a guy who goes nuts and kills his girlfriend.
Glad the little one learned to say Shit. If it makes you feel any better, Frenchie and Caleb were in the living room with Xander when he was just about your son’s age. Caleb said something and Xan replied with “Daddy Dumbass” tacked on to the end. o_O One guess what Frenchie always called Caleb when she was mad at him.
I agree with Amy, though… At least he used it right. Now you get to spend 3 and 4 teaching him not to use those words.
(*For those who are sitting here yelling about how there’s only one peak, this is a pop culture reference…)