I guess it was bound to
happen. We are all human. I just figured I had at least a few more
years before Oskar uttered his first swear word. And deep down I was hoping it
would be in German to avoid any blame.
Instead, at just shy of 19 months, Oskar uttered his first four letter
word… and of course, it was in direct response to me having just said it
myself.
To back things up, we were
staying at Martin’s parents’ house and Tuesday just happens to be the day that
his parents do their deep clean of the house.
And we are talking about a German deep clean: rubber gloves, vacuum,
mop, sweep, mop again, white glove inspection deep clean. Later that day, the three of us, Martin,
Oskar and I headed out in our winter gear to enjoy a brisk walk and to play in
the remaining snow. When we got back to
the house, we all stopped just inside the door to take off our shoes, jackets,
hats and gloves. I was halfway through untying
my boots before turning to undress Oskar when he made a mad dash down the
hallway towards the living room where his trains and blocks were waiting. In
the two seconds of him running down the hall in his snow boots and wet clothes,
I was frozen: afraid to run after him in my own dirty shoes but equally afraid
of the damage his muddy boots would cause not only to the hallway and hallway
rugs but the entire carpet of the living room… all freshly cleaned earlier that
day.
Martin’s yells of surprise and
fear awoke me from my trance and I took off after Oskar in my boots attempting
to avoid the rugs. Thankfully while
Oskar is fast, he isn’t that coordinated and he tripped halfway down the
hallway and landed with a belly flop on the rug. It was only three strides to reach him and in
that time I sized up the damage and found a few pint sized muddy foot prints on
both the tile and rug. To which I
exclaimed “shit” under my breath. And
Oskar, in his perfect pitch responded with an echoed “shit.” Of which Martin
followed up with a smirk and a snarky remark.
The rugs and mud forgotten, my
only hope at that moment was that like many other times, Oskar would forget the
word he had just perfectly pronounced in the next day, hour or minute. Unfortunately for me, that was not the case
here. He not only repeated it a few more
that times day and the rest of the week, he did so in perfect context and
grammar. What can I say, he is a quick understudy… I can’t be mad at that.
He thankfully has not repeated it
since we got back from Germany and in the meantime, I have been trying to watch
what I say.
