Words are celebrated in our home.

Pine shelving heavy with books of every stripe flank the fireplace, and the top of the coffee table is buried beneath piles of glossy magazines and inky newspapers that mess my fingers.

We believe surrounding our children with the printed word will spur an early interest in reading and ensure their success later in life, mainly because nobody is going to elect to parliament someone who uses phrases such as “Youse guys” and “I gotsta run.”

The schoolyard is a breeding ground for other words, words invented long ago and passed down from one generation to the next by young troublemakers with slingshots and messy hair.

These are the words that our daughters will not find in their treasured Golden Books, those slim hardbound volumes of happy tales and cuddly creatures.

Meghan the Elder is hearing these Other words regularly, according to a statement issued this week in her family’s living room.

“Sometimes they say the ‘s’ word,” Meghan told me while the two of us relaxed on the couch after dinner.

“Which word is that?” I asked without hyperventilating too heavily.

“Stupid.”

“That is an awful word,” I agreed, silently relieved that her childhood innocence was safely intact.

Or was it?

“There’s another word, too,” she continued, her eyes narrowing as she attempted to recall the pronunciation of the world’s most famous four-letter expletive. “They call it the f-word.”

I stared blankly at my daughter, whose sharp power of recall was unfortunately not failing her.

“It sounds like, fuh, fuh …”

Time slowed to a crawl as she searched for the final two consonants that, if uttered aloud, would leave me no choice but to run screaming from the room and possibly even pour molten lead into my ear canals.  

(As an interesting aside, historical research has determined that the f-word was invented many years ago when a fumble-fingered father smashed his thumb with a hammer and, after a good deal of searching for the perfect word with which to express his emotions, yelled something that rhymed with duck.)

This was no duck that was about to leave the lips of my seven-year-old daughter.

My instinct was to clasp my hands hard against my ears and loudly spout gibberish, believing that if I couldn’t hear the words coming from her mouth then it wasn’t happening.

Instead I stopped her short with an energetic waving of my hands, as a starved and stranded castaway might flag down a passing plane.

“No, I get it, please don’t say anymore,” I cried. “I know the word. It isn’t something young ladies should be saying. Nobody in your schoolyard should be saying it.”

I wasn’t telling her anything she didn’t already know.

Meghan has an innate sense of right and wrong, and understood the word was loaded with meaning; she just wasn’t sure what it meant.

“Don’t worry, daddy,” she said with a mischievous smile. “I never say it.”

Editor’s note:
Meghan the Elder has just issued an updated statement: precocious seven-year-old enjoys watching quickly graying father squirm.