The "P" Word (as printed in the Eagle Independent)

“Since when is it okay to drop the F-bomb on the Family Movie Channel?” I exclaimed. Mister Man had channel surfed and finally found one of his perennial favorites, Die Hard. We’ve see it many times. In fact, it was the first action movie I ever saw. Prior to his talking me into watching it, I steered clear of anything with a hint of violence. But, Mister Man—powered by testosterone, wore me down. It ends the same way each time we watch it, but we still enjoy it.

This time however, our kids were in the room with us. They started counting the F-bombs before we could mount a search party to find the clicker. Mister Man looked at me and said “don’t they bleep out the F-bombs? It’s FMC for crying out loud!” Unfazed, the two teens and one tween responded with “Dad, we hear it all the time at school.” Great.

Silly us. We thought FMC stood for the Family Movie Channel. Nope. It’s the Fox Movie Channel. That explains it.

I think as parents we have an added filtering mechanism that switches on when our kids are in our midst. Really. If the spawn hadn’t been in the room with us, John McLane could have spewed forth all his colorful effity…eff…effs without much regard. There are a lot and after awhile you don’t notice them.

Not noticing word usage recently put me in a predicament with our 9-year-old, the tween, the baby of the family. I’m still waiting for the right opportunity to correct it. Otherwise, it will come back to me. We were watching a seemingly innocent TV program, when one character said something about porno. I didn’t hear it—but she did. My little girl looked up at me with her big green eyes and asked, “Mom, what’s porno?” In a split second, I decided I wasn’t going to be straight forward with her—not this time.

Mister Man and I have always been straight forward with our five kids. Margaret is the youngest and I just had a moment where I didn’t want to tell her the truth. In the past, I explained to our older kids what condoms were when they asked at a very young age. We explained to our teens (when they were tweens) that mom’s dear friend is a lesbian…and we’ve never avoided talks about the birds and the bees.

But, at that moment, being straight forward was not anything I felt compelled to be. So, in that split second decision, Jiffy-Pop came into my mind. I stared back into those big green eyes and said “old fashioned popcorn.”

There was a brief description of how you prepare it on the stove, “the popcorn container gets real big and ‘puffs up’ and when it’s finished filling the tin foil, the popcorn is ready to eat!” She looked at me and said, “We’ll have to try that porno sometime.”

I have so far defended my actions by saying that I was lying for the greater good. I’ve told this story to several family members. Through their howls and tears, they have suggested I tell her the truth before she invites a friend over for some old-fashioned porno and a movie.