“Look at that dumb fuck, Daddy,” said my 3-year-old from his car seat.

“Where?” I asked. There were quite a few around us, he could have been talking about any of them.

“The white one,” he continued.

That narrowed it down. There was only one that fit that description.

“That dumb fuck is dirty,” he said. “Why is that dumb fuck so dirty?”

I considered my options. Carefully.

“Some are dirtier than others,” I replied. “It comes with the territory.”

We were sitting outside Starbucks waiting for my wife. We were passing the time the way men do, talking about our feelings, scratching what itches, and cursing a little—some of us more than others.

“Do you like dumb fucks, Daddy?” he asked. It had an added air of the rhetorical.

“I don’t like being too close to them,” I answered. “They are pretty fun to watch, though.”

My wife returned with our coffee and took a seat in the car.

“Mommy, did you see all the dumb fucks?”

I knew that she had.

“Honey,” she said with a straight face. “They are called dump trucks.”

“Dumb fucks,” he repeated.

“Exactly,” I told him, and we sipped our coffee as he watched the last one rumble past.