Potty Mouth

We never thought about raising a child when we started raising the dog.

His name is Jack and he's a cute little bugger. Mostly, he's a good dog. When he's bad, however, he can be a real pecker-head. "Jack," we shout at him when he jumps on people, "off!" Yes. Here we are in Mokpo, South Korea, and if the neighbors could understand what we are shouting, they might wonder why they keep hearing "Jack off! Jack off!" being shouted across the rooftops.

When the dog is in the kitchen trying to raid the trash can or in the bathroom for a midnight snack of cat-poop, we yell, "Screw!" I think I picked up that one from Catch-22: Yossarian is trying to have a conversation with another character and a junior officer walks into the tent. "Screw," he says, hooking a thumb over his shoulder to indicate the subordinate should get scarce. Anyways, the dog hears "Screw!" and knows to get scarce.

The cat, though far more vicious, is much smaller than the dog. When the dog is sniffing his little kitty-behind or trying to get up a game of tag with the reluctant white devil, we tell the dog, "No cat!" This usually suffices to warn the dog that he's taking his life into his paws messing around with the feral feline terror. "No cat!" also works with any animal smaller than the dog: squirrels, chipmunks, birds, other small dogs. It's kind of a catch-all for "Don't be stupid. That thing will mess you up."

So, anyways. Little Gandalf will be here soon enough and he'll hear these things being shouted at the dog on a pretty regular basis. Pretty soon he'll be talking and soon after that he'll be interacting with others among his age group. Oh, my god. What will the other parents think the first time our boy tells one his little friends to, "Screw!" Or when another kid gets too close and Gandalf screams, "Jack off!" And how will Gandalf use "No cat!"? I can't imagine, but it should be embarrassing, I'm sure.





In other news:
I started my own CafePress shop. Click the banner below to look at the t-shirt I 'designed' using a nice public domain photo from the NASA archives. Mariner 9 is the first human-built spacecraft to reach another planet, so it deserves a t-shirt, you know.



Another visit to the baby-doc this weekend and hopefully a baby soon. Rachel is getting a bit antsy. I think her exact words were, "I am never going to be not pregnant." (She says this a lot, along with "David, rub my shoulders" and "I am going to kill you.")