Teaching My Child the Potty-Mouth

Adrian is not with us anymore. Carlos says he's in the Valley, but I think he's cut him off. Carlos is a grown up. Not like I've watched him from childhood or anything, but I'm impressed with the man he's become. New daughter (a matching pair now), owns a house, he'll do whatever the hell is necessary to keep it up. In a lot of ways, he's what I wish I was. Posted Monday, April 16, 2007

Just got the flyer on the door for big trash pick-up, and so the weekend was spent outside, chainsaw a-purrin'. Were I not such a big brawny Texan, I'd have to admit that chainsaws make me want to cry and wet my panties, but this one I got is pretty cool. It's on a pole, so I can get the high branches. But wait, there's more! I was using it yesterday and it got stuck inside the wound I was inflicting on the overhead branch. I pulled. Still stuck. I gave it a little juice (electric, not gasoline). Still stuck. I pulled again -- and the rod that holds it up telescoped out another yard or so, nearly dropping me in the grass. Hot damn! Now I can get even higher! I eventually got the saw unstuck, and proceeded to get jiggy with the longer pole. Not a treetop left in my yard. All the trees are cut off at my eyeline.

I finally got to move the old wall-oven out to the curb. Wasn't there more than two hours before a rattletrap pickup cruised our street and snatched it up. I should've put it out a month ago! We got new appliances then, the oven and a refrigerator. The wall-oven came out easier than I'd expected, just heavy, but I managed to stagger it out to a wheelbarrow in the garage, and then to reside on the side-yard of the house until this weekend. The new oven was more of a challenge -- it was bigger, forcing me to cut the wall-opening an inch or so on each side. Tight, but it got in. And then it was just a matter of plugging it in, really simple. I could be one Handy Andy if all the jobs were this simple.

The new fridge is pretty badass, but the old one was still working. So I put out the call to all my usual suspects, and Carlos was the first responder. He came by with his childhood friend Adrian to pick it up. He was shooting a documentary about Adrian at the time, and so ran the camera while Adrian did most of the work. Adrian's a pleasant little guy, with a straight-forward, can-do attitude, a sort of "if it's going to get done, guess I'll be the one to do it" philosophy that I admire wholeheartedly. Indeed, all the men I've met from the Valley fall into that category -- however, I must admit, every man I've met from the Valley has been a friend of Carlos, so maybe this quality is exclusive to his friends and not the men of the Valley in general. Still, if the sampling I've found is any indication, I'd crew a movie in the Valley without hesitation. These are the kind of people you need around a set, and just one reason I'll likely never again make a movie without Carlos Pina being a part of it.

(Incidentally, it's worth noting that all the women I've met from the Valley are badass iconoclasts who wouldn't spit on me if I were on fire. But all the women I've met from the Valley are Rollergirls, which might go farther to explain this attitude than any geographic derivation -- still, if Valley women are all such ass-kickers, it might help explain why Valley men are so quick to be useful...)

That said, Adrian, it must be mentioned, answers to the name "Vile Bastard." Not just answers to it, indeed, but will happily introduce himself as such when meeting new people. "Hi, I'm Vile," he enjoys saying. I've seen no evidence of any vileness, and he speaks of his grandmother with such fondness that he cannot be a bastard by my definition. Times when I've called Carlos and he's been present, he's eagerly asked to get on the phone to say hi, like a child wanting to talk to grandpa, but with the phrase "let's get together and drink some beers" inserted.

Still, Carlos knows things I do not about Adrian, so when Adrian began to tell my five-year-old son a joke, I was amused but not shocked when Carlos cut him off mid-sentence. He was concerned about the language. Only thing I might've been worried about was the dialect he was adopting for the story, especially when he mentioned Africa as setting (Adrian delights in the sort of joke your boozy uncle will tell at the lodge meeting or the bowling alley, but can't finish at the family reunion without his wife elbowing him in the ribs). One applauds Carlos's bulldog spirit in protecting my progeny from profanity, although I happen to know he doesn't exercise the same restraint with his own daughter, who is slightly younger than my boy.

I am not a huge curser. Like smoking, it's something I know how to do, but I don't do it often. Unlike smoking, I probably do let one fly about once a day, but that's an average, more when I've struck my thumb with a hammer, less when I've simply misplaced my keys. And it varies from what the person listening is used to hearing -- my mother thinks I'm as foul-mouthed as a gangsta-rappin' sailor, my wife thinks I channel Yosemite Sam. My exclamations of pain or frustration tend to run to "dadgummits" or "godblastit" or even an only-semi-coherent grumble that, I'll confess, is a lot closer to my wife's description than an Eddie Murphy monologue circa 1987.

Still, he's learning. We were at a party the other night, the kids at a table with cheese pizza and juice bags, and the word "fart" sounded above all the other little voices, and much giggling ensued. Not among the mothers in the room, however, who gasped. Me, I just lowered my head. I recognized too well the voice that spoke the word. (We'd not long before discovered the story "Walter the Farting Dog" at the library, which involves a loveable family pet with gas so noxious as to threaten his happy home, until... but I won't spoil it, go get your own copy, the boy loves it, gives it the Junior Barnstrom Seal of Approval.) And recently, after a particularly challenging day of fatherhood, I told my wife when she came home from work, in essence, "I'm done with him, he's all yours." And she looked at the boy and asked, "did you give your father a hard time today?" And he replied, with that mixture of innocence and defensiveness one can only find in the truly young, "I didn't piss him much."

Oh, to hear your own words bounced back from the little pitcher. Once he works out context and syntax, we'll send him off to spend Christmas with Grandma.