A Growing Boy With A Growing Vocabulary

One morning in First Grade, when I was deeply engrossed in an intricate crayon drawing of an underground ant colony, my table-mate, Bryan, interrupted me.

“Hey, what are you doing?”  He asked, peering over my shoulder.

“I’m drawing an ant col-”

“Oh, that’s cool.  Hey, so do you want to hear a bad word?”  Clearly Bryan didn’t really care to find out what I was doing.  He had his own agenda.

“A bad word?  What, you mean like saying ‘their’ instead of ‘there’?”

“No, no.”  Bryan shook his head dismissively.  “Do you want to hear a bad word- like a word you aren’t supposed to say?”

“Not particularly.” 

“You sure?”

“Why would I want to know a word if I’m not allowed to use it?  That doesn’t make any sense.  I’d rather live a life of simple ignorance, thank you.”

I turned back to my project.  I was half-way through drawing the queen’s mandibles and I wanted to be sure to get them right. I had to focus because the only brown crayon I had been able to find was really dull now.  I should have waited to draw the trees until after I was done with the ants.  It was a stupid mistake, and now if I screwed up and made the queen’s mandibles too big, the anatomical correctness would be off and this whole drawing would be shot to hell.

“It’s a really bad one,” he whispered, moving his face inches from mine.

                                                                                                                                     

“MY GOD, BRYAN.  Yes, let’s hear this word.  I want to hear it so badly now.  Please tell me.”  I threw my crayon into the big bucket in the center of the table in exasperation.  Casey, who had been picking her nose all day reached in with her boogery hand and picked up my crayon.  Marvelous.  She noticed my frown and extended the promise:  “I’ll give it right back."  No thank you, Casey.  That can be yours forever now.

I turned to fully face Bryan, opening my eyes widely in sarcastic anticipation.

Bryan shifted in his seat.  “Well I don’t want to say it.  It’s a bad word.”

At first I stared blankly in disbelief.  A few moments later, he was still blushing at the prospect of saying this word.  I became inquisitive.  “Bryan, what was your game plan here?  Remember, you sought me out for this.  How did you envision this transaction occurring?”

Bryan looked crestfallen for a bit but then suddenly he perked up.  “I can spell it out for you!” he yelped excitedly.  He grabbed a purple crayon from the tub in the center of the table and flipped my drawing over.  Before I could stop him, he had scrawled the word “SHIT” in enormous letters across the back of my drawing. 

He pushed the paper toward me.  “There.  That’s the bad word,” he said, obviously very proud of himself. 

“Shit?”  I said, seeking some sort of affirmation.  I had never heard this word before and was curious to how it was pronounced.  I was also skeptical that it was “bad” since I had never heard it before.  If this was indeed a bad word, I’m sure someone would have told me by now.

Bryan’s expression immediately changed to one of horror and disgust.  He recoiled from me while muttering in a hushed tone “you said it…you said it.”

I was still unconvinced.  “Shit isn’t a bad word.  I’ve never heard of it before.”  I played with the word, trying different ways to say it.  “Shit.  Shit.  It sounds stupid.”

Bryan was covering his ears while looking at me with the widest-eyed terror that I have ever seen.  It was as if he thought that the word he had just taught me was an ancient incantation which was going to cause a sputtering volcano to sprout up in the middle of our tiny, windowless classroom.  If he was going to be so offended by me saying it, then he shouldn’t have taught it to me.  That’s like buying your kids a bunch of Nerf guns and then grounding them for shooting at the dog.

“I- I- I’m gonna tell on you!”  Bryan stammered.

“Shit’s not a bad word.  Go for it.”  I said.  I watched as Bryan ran over to our teacher and tugged on her sleeve.  He returned with her shortly.

“Bryan tells me you’ve been saying…bad words.”  My teacher trailed off as she looked down to see a big, purple “SHIT” gleaming up at her from the paper in front of me.

“Shit isn’t a bad word, is it?”  I asked.

“SEE, HE SAID IT AGAIN!”  Bryan exclaimed, pointing at me and jumping up and down.

My teacher dragged me out of the classroom, Bryan jeering behind us.  She took me straight to the principal to whom I tried to articulate the situation.  It didn’t go super well.  I was in his office for so long that I missed lunch, and when he finally allowed me to go back to my class, my ant drawing was gone from my desk.  My teacher had presumably collected it as a worthy addition to my disciplinary file to wave in front of my parents’ faces when they came in for conferences.

I’m not sure where my drawing ended up, but if I ever find it, I’m going to finish the queen ant and then frame it.  Shit side out.