Baby’s First Words…
By the time I was 3 years old I was still without the use of the English language. I indicated my preferences with finger pointing and various grunts and groans. “Son, would you like some potatoes?”, and then I’d give some garbled response that, I’m assuming, my mother had learned to decode because then I got the potatoes.
She was distressed that a 3 year old was still communicating like a caveman so, thinking that I might be retarded; she took me to the doctor for an examination. After the doctor had given me the once over he announced to my mother that no, I was not retarded, just extremely lazy. “Whenever he wants something he makes those noises”, theorized the doctor, “and then you give it to him. He doesn’t have to use language.”
So, there it was. The doctor busted me out and ruined a potential lifetime of relationships uncomplicated by meaningful discussion. But what could I do as a 3 year old? First it would be this speaking thing and then that would lead to tying my own shoes and after that, God knows what.
Around this time our household consisted of my mother, father #2 and his mother, who did a short stint with us for reasons that I don’t recall but that I’m sure didn’t make my mother particularly cheery. My grandmother was my dad’s personal tormentor but seemed to find it necessary to expand the operation to include my mother. By virtue of being 3, I was immune from her toxicity. Oh, glorious youth.
Anyway, one morning my dad, mom and grandmother were huddled around the kitchen table doing the coffee ritual when I came bounding in to dick around with my dad who was one of those people who had to complete the ritual before fully functioning. I poked and poked the bear until he told me to “Go on; go outside and play”, to which I turned on a pivot and began marching towards the front door chanting:
“Get going you sonuvabitch. Get going you sonuvabitch. Get going you sonuvabitch” and on and on until I marched right out the door.
As my mother explains it from here, the reactions were as follows: my dad started laughing because he always loved a good bit, my grandmother was appalled and exclaimed, “Did you hear what he said?!?” and my mother said, “I don’t care what he said, he spoke!” My mother had reserved a spot in her scrapbook of my existence for ‘baby’s first words’ but that idea was all shot to hell and left blank.
Perhaps that time spent down at the other corner of our street hanging out with the older boys made an impression after all and so from that moment on I spent the next week doing nothing but swearing up a storm and it seemed that this was my entire vocabulary. If they wanted speech, I’d give them speech.
My dad, mom and I were driving down the road a few days later when my dad started grumbling about the car ahead of him not moving fast enough. He groused a bit more, at which point I stuck my head out of the left rear window and yelled, “Get the hell out of the way!” to the horror of my dad who feared some sort of reprisal. It was explained to me that if I kept this up father was bound to get punched in the head so, please, stop doing this.
Sure enough, I eventually tired of the thrill of expletives, as kids tend to do, and moved on to normal speech patterns but it’s a time I vaguely remember fondly; a time of liberation and freedom couched in ignorance; a time to really let my freak flag fly.