Misspoken

I said a bad word.

Not here, mind you. This blog is carefully engineered to be readable by those most chaste and pure without worry of stumbling across naughty words and phrases. Implications and allusions? I cannot deny and/or verify those, but my aim is to steer clear of four letter words as a practice. This is reflective of my job and my work with children. And their parents. 

To wit I was once confronted by a pair of first graders for using "the S word." I searched my own utterances for any references, specific or other, to feces. I replied to this pair of upturned faces that I had no recollection of such colorful language. They looked at one another, and they agreed they should remind me, in a whisper: "You said 'shut up.'" 

And they were exactly right. In a moment of frustration with the noise level, I had spoken the unspeakable. Mind you, these same children use that phrase with impunity night and day, with regular reminders from adults who surround them that this is not the way to get someone to be quiet. "Please be quiet" are the acceptable words, and then we move on from there. 

I made particular note of this, filing it away as a forbidden phrase, and made a mental note not to fall into that trap again. These same first graders have moved on to middle or high school, I can't remember exactly, but the memory has stuck with me. So much so that whenever the volume becomes too much for me and most of the students in my room to bear, I rely on the more socially acceptable, "Shush!" It is a deliberate switch to provide the exhortation of the excised words with the closing "shhhh" that can be drawn out for effect. 

"But you said," the kids will begin.

"No. I said 'shush.'" The distinction clear, but the effect being very similar. 

Am I getting by on a technicality? You bet I am. But it's one upon which I will hang my hat. Until such time as the goalposts are moved yet again.