My kids love the F Word

by Kate Willoughby Hall, who lives with three boys, all of whom love the F word and anything to do with it.

My kids are in love with the F Word. As terrified as I was, and now utterly ashamed as I share my childrens’ inner-most horrific behaviors with you, I have to come clean.

I hate to admit this, but their dad is the one that got them excited about it. No matter where they go or what they do, they love to talk about it, how it sounds, smells, and makes other people feel.

While I imagine other families hovering around the Monopoly board, snuggling at famly movie night, and sitting quietly around the dinner table discussing their days, my family hears someone pass gas and the door is open to a flood of wild laughter, arm-waving and general grandiosity at this most essential of bodily functions.

Nowhere is sacred. It’s bad enough that this is often the central-focus at the island as everyone munches on Toaster Strudels and as I ask what they want in their lunches, the boys respond: Fart-tarts. No, just kidding we’ll have Fartipops. Or how ’bout some Farti-sauce today? Later, as they descend the bus they speak through evil grins of the evil stench lurking between the seats of the big cheese, where the big kid down the street just let one loose: Silent but Deadly, my eight-year-old instructs me, as if I’ve never heard of that one before.

We love the broccoli, mama, with ranch dip, ’cause that makes the stinkiest ones EVAAAAAH. I zip the lunchbag up and pat my little darlings on the top of the head, their gas-laden lunches ready to blow at the sound of the cafeteria bell.

After school, when they’re at gymnastics, they’re sure to run over in front of all the other parents for the most spectacular effect, to share with me that while they were jumping on the trampoline they were letting loose a stream of sounds so magical that they wish I could have heard it. Then they remind me not to be the first to say anything, ’cause the Smeller’s the Feller, har har. These moments are the ones I’m sure to cherish in my golden years.

They’ve even gotten to the little one. After living with three boys for five years I thought that surely God would send me a sweet little angel with which I could pick flowers, dance, and read princess stories with. Well, I got my girl, but unfortunately she thinks her brothers and her dad are hilarious and often joins in the “farty-fart-fart” cheers, jeers and laughter anytime anyone lets the tiniest one loose. When I begged her to use the word “toot” (all the ladies say that, I confided in her) she jeered at me and said, that’s funny mama but FART IS A FUNNY WORD, AIN’T IT?!

The minute I brought home my iPad, they downloaded the Whoopie Cushion app. When I log into Google on my laptop the words “fart and noises” are the most popular searches. The sounds that I hear coming from their rooms late at night? Fits of laughter caused by—you guessed it—nature’s most bountiful source of laughing gas.

I’m hoping this dissipates with time, and as they mature they won’t focus so much upon these issues and that they will (if you’ll excuse the pun) just bubble up naturally on occasion. Watching their dad, my brother, and all the other forty-somethings I know, though, I fear the worst. We’re in this for the long haul.