SHOOT, I RECKON

My eleven year old grandson, Dylan, does not like me to cuss. He’s a sensitive boy who’s been told that swearing is wrong, and he likes to do things right. I’m a potty mouth from way back, and, tired of hearing myself swear like the proverbial sailor, I’ve done a decent job over the years of eliminating the F word from my vocabulary. But, when stressed or distressed by something loud or intrusive or uncomfortable, I often still yell out the S word.

A couple of weeks ago, when Dylan and his parents and sister were visiting, I was shuffling things around in my kitchen pantry when a bottle of canola oil fell and crashed to the floor.

“Shit!” I hollered.

Dylan’s little boy voice from across the kitchen. “Granola? What did you say?”

“ ‘Shoot’,” I told him, as automatically as I’d said “Shit” the moment before.

I wish you could have seen Dylan’s face then, under his mop of California blonde hair. The sweetest little twinkle in his eye. His mouth curved in almost laughter. A hint of delight that he’d caught me. “Granola,” he said. “Are you sure?”

I almost lied. But couldn’t. “You’re right,” I told him. “I said a big ole ‘shit’. I’m sorry, Dilly.”

Even more delight in his face. An even sweeter smile. “That’s okay, Granola.”

A couple of days later, I spilled iced tea on the kitchen floor. “Sh–” I began, and then, catching myself, I finished with a rip-roaring “Shoot!”

Dylan and his big sister, Sophie, yelled, “Yay, Granola! You did it! You did it!”

“Well,” I said. “I did, didn’t I?”

Dylan came over and hugged me. Dylan is the best hugger on the planet. He squeezed me around my middle and snuggled his head under my chin and squeezed harder. His face, when he turned it up to me, was angelic.

He may not stay so angelic as he becomes a teen, but I doubt he’ll start cussing, like the junior high kids he hears a lot and fears a little. He may stop hugging me so freely. But I bet he remembers that, though his Granola often can’t stop herself from swearing, she respects him enough to tell him the truth even when it makes her look less than stellar. And his Granola will be eternally grateful to him for holding her to her own, sometimes, wavering commitments and for showing her how pure and unadulterated a child’s love can be.

“Teach your children well,” I’ve heard Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young sing at least a hundred times. They end the song with “Teach your parents well.”  Those instructions apply to grandparents too. Dylan and I are teaching each other.

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