 |
A Clean Act
Mike Barfield's trying hard not to swear in front of his young son...
Sometimes it's hard for me to believe that my eldest child, Jacob, is only twenty-eight months old, for in that short space of time he and I have both learned so much. Jacob has learned to focus his vision, co-ordinate his limbs, communicate his needs, crawl, walk, talk, run and sing the theme tune to Bob the Builder; whilst I, meanwhile, have learned not to swear. Now this may not seem that big a deal, but to me it was like climbing my own personal Ben Nevis. I was going to say Everest, but let's not exaggerate too much here.
In pre-Jacob days, I wasn't particularly foul-mouthed, but as they say on televison, I did contain occasional strong language and scenes likely to offend, and which weren't always restricted to after the watershed. Nor sadly were they restricted to times when Jacob was absent, indeed there's nothing like changing the Jackson Pollock nappy of a struggling screaming one-year-old only to find half-way through that you lack cotton-wool, wipes, a clean nappy and then the child you first started with to send the mind on an all too short search for a suitable expletive.
Now saying oh b****r! or s***! or even ****! in front of a new-born baby whose verbal skills are no greater than that of your average satellite TV DJ, is no real problem. All you get back are gurgling noises and the odd spit bubble or two. It's as they get older you have to be more circumspect. Children learn by imitation and regrettably it wasn't the patiently repeated, "Ba-Na-na" or "Tedd-ee" or "Sub-sid-i-ar-ity", but those words spoken with most force and under the greatest duress that Jacob always repeated instantly, in a spirit of huge excitement and with differing degrees of accuracy. Short words. Many of them Saxon in origin. And often containing no more than four letters.
More
Μύ |
|
