We once had this cute fiery red Head staying with us. She was 10...going on 25. You know the type. She stayed with us for about four months and was a lot of help and fun to have here. Man could she clean! I miss her terribly!!! For other reasons beside her cleaning of course.
One rare school night, we were watching an episode of America's Funniest Home Videos. Love the show, but they always seem to have the cheesiest hosts! Seriously Walt Disney...of all the genius characters that have been created by masterminds such as yourself, all you can come up with is Bob Sagot and Whatever Burgeron??
Anyway, one particular clip started with a best man at a wedding giving the traditional toast. He stands and raises his glass in the air and the subtitles start as he speaks ..."Fornication..." he says as it spells out on the bottom of the screen, which brings amounts of surprise from the wedding guests and a look of death from the Bride as she sits with her Groom awaiting a romantic toast. The Best man immediately realizes how it sounds with the gasps coming from wedding guest. He clears his throat, regains composure, and starts again...'For An Occasion such as this...' he corrects, and amid all the laughter the clip is over.
My husband and I laugh, not quite hysterically, but if you had seen the look coming from the Bride, you would realize she was actually on the wrong show and her episode of Bridezilla was previewing in the following week.
Remember the little red head in the room? She looks up at my husband and I with the 10 year old ignorance, yet demanding the 25 year old answer. "What does fornication mean? Why is that so funny?" We simply reply that she can ask her mom later and not to worry about it. Now who are the ignorant ones here? Her? Or us thinking that answer would settle the conversation?
So we go one with our lives until...the next day. I am sitting in her fourth grade classroom with her teacher looking over progress reports, homework, and reading charts. The fun of parent teacher conferences. Her teacher stops mid sentence and asks..."Oh...Yeah...Did she watch some interesting TV last night?"
I start to think for a second...America's Finniest Video's...interesting? "No." I say. "Why do you ask?"
"She came to school today and the first thing she did was pull down the big dictionary. She had all the class members looking up the meaning of the word Fornication."
Great! The teacher proceeded to tell me that she had to put the dictionary away and tell the students that the word fornication is not a bad word, but certainly not a school word. So, they needed to go home and ask there parents if they really wanted to know what the meaning was.
So that is the story of thirty sets of parents explaining to their ten year old child what fornication actually is, or like me, telling them not to worry about it until they are older...yeah, like that is going to work!
Aaahhhh...Good Times.
No comments:
Post a Comment