Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: butt, dipstick, England, fag, funny, generation gap, offensive, rainbow, rubber, sex, sex education, verbal, words, words. generation
I know that I’m going to catch an enormous amount of grief over the name of this post but let me explain. This post is about verbal misconceptions, which I find totally hysterical!
Earlier this evening I was having a conversation with a friend. We were discussing the fact that her 10 year old, 4th grade son was coming home from school with some questions about sex. Well, not necessarilysex but things that were potentially sexual in nature. In fact I was seriously thrown over by the use of the word “Rainbow”. After she explained what it meant in a sexual way I just about fell over laughing! Who comes up with this stuff?? Some over fantasized, over sexualized kid who’s parents aren’t monitoring the internet! I won’t repeat what it was, you could probably google it and find out. Suffice it to say there’s no way that it’s happening in the 4th grade, or even in the 8th. I’m betting it ain’t happening in the 12th grade or beyond because I don’t know more than 2 women who would even conceive of having so many different colors of lipstick, let alone 6 women who would have one of any of the colors of the rainbow……..get it? It’s not happening.
But that made me think……what other words do we come across that have the potential to offend and often carry a double meaning, very often so unexamined that most people don’t know anything but the literal and/or original meaning? Here are a few:
Fag: Okay, we know it as the very politically incorrect term for a homosexual but that’s not how I know it. In fact when I was living in England this was the term used to describe a cigarette…..which is offensive because it can kill!
Dipstick: Isn’t this the term that Boss Hog used all the time in The Dukes of Hazard to describe his idiot sidekick? The other day my friend told me that her daughter is taking driving lessons and she was learning about the engine. She came home from class and proclaimed “Hey mom! Did you know that there is really something that’s called a dipstick??” I wet my pants with laughter.
Douche Bag: This is a seriously offensive term but when you examine what an actual douche bag is then it shouldn’t be so offensive. After all, it’s a cleanser, and a natural one at that. So who thought up this brilliant term for a jerk? Were they thinking “I’m going to call you a vaginal cleanser because you’re such a jerk!” That’s a little strange, don’t you agree?
Blow Job vs. Blow Off: Yikes, I’m at risk for getting tagged now. I’m not going to explain a blow job. Suffice it to say if you’ve ever asked a bartender for one they won’t slap you, it’s a rather tasty shot. (Yikes, reading that back sounds even worse). I also almost got slapped when I told my dad that my friend “blew me off” when I was in high school. Geez, he about came out of his skin. It was all I could do to reassure him that it wasn’t the same thing as……well, you know.
Butt: I’ll bet you think you know the meaning of this word but you’re wrong. It’s another term for a cigarette, in England. Remember the movie “Back to the Future”? When I lived in England I went to see it in the movie theater. Biff called McFly a “Butthead” and I cracked up laughing! I was the only person in the entire theater that laughed. See “Cigarettehead” is not funny, at all.
Eraser vs. Rubber: Now this is crazy! In the UK, an eraser is a rubber and in the US a rubber is an eraser! Get it? One is a contraceptive, the other is a writing tool. If I have to explain it, call me.
AND I haven’t even touched on the “cool words” like : MINT, RAD, FAB, and COOL! What about going “STEADY”! That’s for another post, another day!
So at the risk of getting too wordy, you get my point right? I’m not so concerned with offending people with language as much as offending them with actions. Remember this saying: “I’m rubber and you’re glue! Whatever you say bounces off of me and sticks to you!”? That could hurt! Or how about “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words (or names) will never hurt me”? They should have added “but don’t throw sticks and stones anyway!”
Either way words are words and tomorrow the next generation is going to come up with another colorful and inventive word for some sexual act/fantasy/illegal substance/jerk name and I choose to laugh because there’s no way on God’s green earth that whatever they come up with hasn’t been used before, in a different way with a different meaning. Suffice it to say….Bring it on!
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: CVS pharmacy, daughters, friends, funny, humor, Menstral Cycle, menstruation, pads, Period, sex education, tampons
I felt like a change, I hope that you enjoy the new look of my site……I think it’s peaceful!
I must preface this post by saying that if you’re a man reading this, you may want to think twice. Although I think that this is an amusing little story about a mom explaining the facts of life to her daughter, a man may be put off. So there it is, I’ve given you fair warning!
4 years ago FD was about 10 and believe it or not she actually had friends that were starting to get their periods. (As a side note: I blame it on the hormones in milk and other food products, but I have nothing to back up this claim, it’s just my belief!) One evening she was complaining of a stomach ache and since I was so paranoid that she could be getting her period I decided that it might be time to have “the period talk” with her. I asked her to localize her pain. “Is it up here?” I inquired, placing my hand just below my chest “or is it down here?” I asked, very carefully placing my hand on my abdomen.
She must have thought I was nuts because that’s the look she gave me (and she gives me this look ALL of the time). Either way she informed me that she was sure that it was her stomach and not a pain in her abdomen. While this was a relief to me it also sparked the opportunity to ask her about her knowledge of the female anatomy. So I asked “Do you know what it looks like in here?” and I placed my hand back on my abdomen. She shook her head no and gave me an inquisitive look, so I made the suggestion that we find a picture of the female organs on the Internet.
Hind site is 20/20 and if I had to do it over again I would never have allowed my 10 year old to look over my shoulder while I googled “female organs”. It’s horrifying what you find……and it certainly sparks a whole plethora of questions! After my initial shock I suggested that FD “sit down and watch TV while “mommy finds an appropriate site to visit”.
Eventually I found the proper diagram and I invited FD back over so that I could show her where an egg develops and travels and what the uterus is all about. She seemed fascinated…..and then I got to the part about our “monthly visitor”. I prefer to call this visitor Flo, she visits every month, stays for about a week (just long enough to wear out a welcome), we’re glad when she leaves but we hope she comes again, same time, next month. OK, that’s not exactly how I explained it, but you get the idea. Speaking of ideas, I had what I thought, was another great one……..but remember hind site?
After I felt confident that she understood how periods worked, I decided to show her what tampons and pads look like and how they function. I thought back to an experiment that we did in sex education when I was in school. It must have had an impact on me because I can’t believe that I remembered it! Here’s what my health teacher did: she took a small glass of water and dunked a tampon into the glass. SLOWLY, the tampon soaked up the water, not all of it but enough that we all understood the concept.
Tampon technology has sure come a long way because that’s not exactly what happened in our experiment. I got the glass of water and went into the bathroom. I pulled out a REGULAR (not Super nor Super Duper) tampon and as I dropped it into the glass my FD and I watched in stunned silence as the tampon soaked up the entire glass of water in less than 1 second…..it may have even happened in a nano-second, it was that fast! She was horrified, completely freaked out, and I had a lot of explaining to do.
She vowed to never use a tampon and I was almost right there with her! I had to explain to her the science regarding the differences between certain substances but that really did nothing to calm her fears. In the end I apologized, threw out my mess and FD and I went back to what we were doing before our little chat began.
FD finally got her period recently and at an inopportune time…..while we were on vacation! I took her to the local CVS which was across the street from where we were staying and as we stood in front of the “wall of pads” we laughed hard about the different options. I had to explain that I had no idea what she should get since I used tampons, and based on our experiment from several years ago that was not an option for her. I asked her what her friends used and she gave me the “are you nuts” look again. It took a while but we finally settled on something with wings, to which I reminded her “when in doubt, take flight”!
I think that it’s great that I have a relationship with FD where we can laugh about “that time of the month”. Periods were no laughing matter when I was a kid….I was devastated and begged my mother not to tell anyone when I got mine. FD couldn’t wait to call her friends, she is proud and I am proud of her. Little does she know she has many, many years of fun times ahead!!
