It’s not like we were watching porn

I don’t generally find myself having the same hang-ups with my daughter’s playtime that a lot of parents tend to have. I don’t freak out when she crawls in dirt, runs through puddles or climbs on things she’ll most likely fall off of. I have been the recipient of multiple double takes at the park where other parents stop dead in their tracks, wondering if I really just said, “Sweetie why don’t you roll in this mud instead,” or “Honey if you’re going to throw rocks, throw them that way.” I’m equally lax when it comes to language. I don’t use the word “silly” to when I really mean “stupid” or “dumb.” I don’t shush The Girl when she starts talking about “poopie” or “pee-pee.” I don’t give her timeouts for saying, “butt” or “crap.” Off those same double takes, I usually respond, “Hey that’s why those words are there… so she doesn’t say ‘a**’ or ‘s***.’” But a few weeks ago, even I found myself putting the kibosh on what is normally a fun and innocent game we play—all because I was afraid of what other parents might think. Justifiably so I might add.

A little backstory on this game. The Girl is at that age where she’s really learning how to manipulate words and language. Rather than simply parroting stock phrases that she hears from us, she’s realizing she has the ability to rework sentence structure in order to elicit certain responses. It’s simple stuff really, mostly substituting one word for another for comedic effect: “Twinkle twinkle little TIGGER. How I wonder what you PIGLET!” A turn of phrase like that will generally set off a good five to ten minutes of she and I trying to top each other with zany substitutions. One popular version of this game is to alternate the names of various body parts into our base phrase of choice: “Oh no, I stepped on your… [foot, eye, elbow, chin].” Of course, because The Girl is at potty training age, and because she has a baby brother who gets his diaper changed about a thousand times a day, words describing the various male and female genitalia will inevitably come into play: “Oh no, I stepped on your… [butt, tushie, nipple, penis, balls].”

Like I said, I consider this to be a pretty innocent game, but a few weeks ago we were hanging out with my sister and her future in-laws when The Girl suddenly decided to play. Unfortunately, the base phrase that she decided to start with was, “I want to kiss your…” Now she started off by saying “hair,” but I knew where this path would eventually lead. All I could think was that these people had met me once. They didn’t know what kind of person I was. Where was their mind going to go when Allison inevitably said, “I want to kiss your… [well, ya know].” Because I know where my mind would go: “Holy f*** (because ‘poop’ would not be an adequate expletive in this situation), this guy is totally pedophiling his daughter.”

Now I didn’t want to create undue attention or perceived guilt by outright ordering my daughter to stop that now. So I tried laughing it off and saying, “No, you don’t want to do that.” But she persisted, thinking this was some new part of the game I’d just made up. “Daddy, I want to kiss your… beard!” Paralyzed and unable to think of any better diversion, I just laughed and said, “Naw!” hoping she would end it on her own. But no. “Daddy, I want to kiss your… neck!” At this point I asked her to come show me how she jumps off the kitchen table and we vacated the living room before the irreversible phrase could be uttered.