Monday, October 20, 2008

Ifs, Ands, but no BUTTS in our Household

There is a list of parental approaches I adopted from my own upbringing. Among them: the approach to Rear End Nomenclature. My mom couldn't stand the word "butt"; hence (genetic hence, I guess), I am no fan of it either.

Determining the name we would use in our family for hindquarters was a bit of a challenge, though. The term had to go well with "my," since, after all, on any given day somebody has something to say about his/her netherparts. "Rear End" is long and awkward; "Behind" is too much of a preposition; "Booty" comes with a little naughty edge to it; "Tush" is cute but a little Too Cute; "Ass" is too crass for kiddoes; "Glutes" is too technical.

We settled for "Bum." Short and innocuous and lengthened to "Bum-Bum" at times.

Reassuring me that she is paying attention to our Terminology Guidelines is our kindergartener, who, having recently memorized my cell phone number, left me this message on my voicemail this morning:

"Mommy! Everybody is saying 'butts' in our family.

"Like, your bum? They're saying 'butts.' Only one time Daddy said 'butts,' but [little sister] keeps saying 'butts' at breakfast this morning.

"So....................................?

"I love you; bye!"

2 comments:

Kate said...

Definitely genetic--we go with "bum" over here too...

Heather P.C. said...

G's favorite banned words right now are "stupid" and "butt" (we, too, are a "bum"/"bum-bum" family). He gets either a reminder or a time out whenever he uses them depending on how crossing-the-line his usage is. However, now, whenever A says something like "what a stupid show" or when I say "you can eat your carrots but you can't have any more bread," he'll answer with "don't say stupid [or but]." Gah!