“Dammit!” my three-year-old daughter says. She then tries to stand up once again on the footboard of our bed. She can’t keep her balance and falls back on the mattress.
“Dammit!”
She follows this routine for a good five minutes while the wife and I watch her. With every fall and every dammit my wife’s look directed at me gets a little more mad, a little more unbelieving, and a little more judgmental.
Deer in headlights, that is my best description. At first, I was hoping that my wife wouldn’t recognize the swear word and chalk it up to three-year-olds ramblings. After the fifth time my daughter said it, I was hoping that my wife would at least be proud that our daughter used it in the correct context. At the very least, I should be allowed to build a defense as allowed by the constitution. I will be representing myself.
See, several weeks ago the dumb dog went underneath the deck and wrapped its leash around a post AND got into the mud. I was mad, as I feel anyone would be, and went to untangle her. This is an ongoing battle with me and the dog where the dog is winning and I am France.
I bent over, rather quickly in my anger, to undo the leash. I didn’t realize that my head was level with the support beam. I nearly knocked myself unconscious and was bleeding from the head wound I suffered. I left the dog there. The kids saw me do this. I ***may*** have said “dammit” and a few other cuss words. I mopped up the blood, but I really don’t remember much.
But if I did, I do think it is understandable given the situation.
A few days after that I was again on the deck walking up the stairs. I had just cleaned the inside of the garbage can. And to do a good job, as I am want to do as a great SAHD, I used the strongest cleaner I had, Oxyclean. It was a five-pound box of the stuff.
I carried the box up the stairs, perhaps not using the proper caution, without really realizing that the stairs were wet. Without warning, my flip flops slipped, my shin came down hard and the entire opened box of Oxyclean flew into the air. The kids thought it was snow and began to try and play in it. Again, I feel that it was an appropriate use of language given the situation.
Incidentally, that much Oxyclean does a fabulous job of killing grass.
I once accidentally went into the women’s restroom–dammit.
The QB of my Alma mater threw an interception at a critical moment in a game–crap, dammit dammit.
My cat beheaded a mouse and left it on the porch where I stepped on it barefooted–gross dammit.
The kids decided to wake up at 5:30 am and wanted peanut butter and jelly for breakfast–yawn, dammit, yeah ok peanut butter and jelly it is.
I bit my tongue, drawing blood, while eating salsa–thammit.
So my point is, and my defense against my wife’s look is that it could have been much, much worse.
My wife isn’t buying my argument, and as the sole member of the jury pool, I’m not liking my chances. I begin to explain that this is a side effect of a daughter being raised by a stay at home dad. Men cuss a lot more and that this is not an issue of improper language but more of an issue of gender equality and role reversal.
There should be some gender norming, that’s all I’m saying. It should be considered. This argument may have worked if my little girl hadn’t chosen that moment to start teaching her two-year-old brother the same word. Now they are both jumping off the bed.
Dammit.
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Originally Published on The Hossman Chronicles
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Photo by Marisa Howenstine on Unsplash