Stories from the Stringam Family Ranches of Southern Alberta

From the 50s and 60s to today . . .



Sunday, February 19, 2012

Another Language Barrier

Don't let the dapper exterior fool you.
Somewhere inside is that  9-year-old.

Ah. Influencing the young and innocent.
Even in families.
It's not always a good thing . . .
When my Dad was nine, his oldest brother lived close by.
His married oldest brother.
Who had a three-year-old son, Brian.
Brian adored his much older uncle.
He toddled along after 'Unca Mark' whenever he could.
Usually a good thing.
Occasionally . . . not.
My Dad had the twice-daily chore of milking the cow.
Brian loved to go along.
Just because.
It was a fun, companionable time for the two boys.
All was well.
One day, Brian's mother sat him in a chair in the kitchen and prepared to give her small son a haircut.
She combed the unruly locks into submission.
"Ouch!" Brian  said.
"Sorry, dear, but you have some tangles."
"Ouch!" Brian said again. "Mo-om!"
"Almost through."
"Ouch!"
Brian glared at his mom.
"If you do that again, I'm going to have to say 'Sunny Beach'!"
His mother stopped combing. "What?"
"I'm going to have to say 'Sunny Beach'."
"What?" she asked again.
"Suunnny Beeeach," he said slowly and patiently.
Light dawned.
"You mean 'Son of a . . .'"
Her mouth dropped open in horror.
She gripped his small shoulder.
"Where did you hear that?!"
He stared at her, not understanding her panic.
She gave his shoulder a little shake. "Where did you hear that?!"
"That's what Unca Mark says when the cow kicks him!"
Two things resulted from that haircut.
  1. Brian actually did get his hair shortened.
  2. 'Unca Mark' received a lecture on language and its proper uses. Oh! And . . .
  3. I just realized that, when it came to cursing, my Dad didn't have a leg to stand on (see here).  
It's a good world.


13 comments:

  1. Sunny Beach. Another place to be; probably no cow kicking you.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sunny Beach...that's adorable.

    ReplyDelete
  3. While we were staying in temp housing waiting for our house to be done, we lived by a little kid who quite a vocabulary of curse words. Our son repeated one of them as something like Shintz! When we asked him what was up he said, "oh, that's my french." Darn those French.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Huh. And I always wanted to learn to speak French! Maybe I'll have to re-think this!

      Delete
  4. Diane, and isn't your father a handsome fellow! I love "sunny beach"! I think I'll adopt it and use it instead of the real words the next time I tempted to curse! hee hee! :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you! I wish I looked like him!
      Out of the mouths of babes . . .!

      Delete
  5. here in bc I think they only know swear words Even on tv those writers have it good They don't require a large vocabulary and to think our teachers made us suffer to learn bigger and better words. :(

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I agree. When do we get to use all of those wonderful words they forced us to learn?!

      Delete
  6. I've actually got that story in Coffee Row. It's good. There's another story about Dad and Brian that's just as good.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Okay. I'm curious now. What is it?! You need to put it in your own blog!!!

      Delete
  7. It's great that he was so innocent to such worldly language. Cute post!

    ReplyDelete

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