Fork Me

The other night while eating dinner, Amy stabbed a forkful of ziti into her ear, pulled the fork back, blinked at it, and yelled, "Fuck!" She proceeded to wave the fork around and say, "fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck," in a sing-song voice.

Not wanting to miss a teaching moment, or risk an embarrassing recreation of her impromptu fork opera the next time we went out to dinner, I helpfully corrected my daughter. "Sweetie. That's a fork. Can you say fork? Fooooork."

She smiled at me. She held up her fork. "Fork momma. Fork." As perfect a pronunciation as you could hope for from an 18-month-old child. It was angelic. I beamed with pride. And then she took that fork, jabbed it into her ear again, and yelled "Fuck! Fuck momma!" Pulled out the fork, showed me, "fork", jabbed herself with the fork, "fuck!" "Fork fuck!" And then back into sing-song voice while waving her fork around in the air, "fork, fuck, fork, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, FUCK!"

Oh. So she didn't need my help in learning how to say the word fork after all. Apparently she knew what a fork was. Apparently she knew her "fork" from her "fuck" very well. Because is seemed to me she was using the term "fuck" to express her displeasure at her "fork" having stabbed her in the ear. And then she went on to explain her use of the colorful language to me. How very interesting. Especially since I don't recall speaking like a trucker around my daughter all that often.

According to my parents, this is probably the influence of my younger brother. Now I might have insight as to why everything was a "cock" a few months ago. But I'm not going to be dismayed by this. Actually, I'm going to choose to see this as a sign that she's a budding linguistic genius. Can you say that your child at 18 months properly uses a word so complex and fluid as "fuck", and is able to differentiate it from such a similar sounding word as "fork", and then explain the difference to you in mime? I bet not! Furthermore, she conducts whole versus of song displaying her verbal talents.

Now if she could possibly master the art of not repeatedly stabbing herself in the forking face when she's doing something as simple as eating ziti maybe I could take her out in public.