Miasmatic Review

How to explain this one?

My son is really starting to develop his vocabulary. He’s been talking for a while now, but of late, he is actually trying to expand his vocabulary. The problem is that his pronunciation and enunciation needs work. My wife and I are trying to teach him the proper way to say words, but sometimes he is stubborn and refuses to learn. Other times he sticks by his guns and refuses to pronounce it correctly, like last Sunday.

Clone had spent the weekend with my sister while my wife and I participated in our re-enactment. While with her, she had taken him to the zoo. He fell in love with a stuffed monkey. My sister being the spoiling type bought it for him. When we picked him up Sunday night he had this bright, neon green stuffed monkey in his arms. Okay, if it makes him happy, what do I care? At least it’s not a pink unicorn. We started the long drive back to Rockford. (Oh, we found the cure for his not liking to ride in cars. He must ride in my truck. This is fine for short trips, but since we are not taking my 14 MPG on the highway truck on our vacation this does not help there.) Clone is in the back seat playing away with his new pet and drinking his Chocolate Milk from a sippy cup being happy as a clam.

Clone has always been fascinated by Semis. Even when he was screaming on a trip, the only time he would stop is when we passed an 18-wheeler. He would stop screaming, point and say, “WOW!” over and over until we were done passing it. Then he would take a deep breath and proceed to start screaming again. Sunday was only slightly different in that he wasn’t screaming as we drove down the road. This time however when we passed one of the big rigs, he would say, “Wow, look! Truck!” Except that isn’t exactly how it came out, what came out was, “Wow, look! F*CK!” He then would start chanting “F*CK, F*CK, F*CK!” My wife and I are trying not to laugh, we know he is trying to say truck, but can’t make the TR sound. We kept trying to correct him. We had the following conversation a couple of dozen times.

Us, “No, TR-uck”

Clone mater of factly, “F*ck”

Us, “TR-uck”

Clone “F-*ck”

Us, “TR-uck”

Clone, “No, F*ck”

Us laughing now, “No, it’s a truck. TR… TR-uck.”

This would go on for miles. Every time I passed a Semi he would start over all again. At one point he was playing with his stuffed monkey when we passed the truck and he started chanting, “Monkey F*ck, Monkey f*ck, MONKEY F*CK!” The attempt to correct it failed miserably. No matter what we did, he kept calling them the wrong thing. Then to make matters worse my wife, in an attempt to change the topic, was pointing out the cliffs alongside the road. She said, “Look Clone, ROCKS!” I kid you not, with out skipping a beat that little boy shouts, “COCKS!” and proceeds to chant it. I almost caused an accident due to my hysterical laughter. My wife is not as amused by this as I am. This went on for the entire trip home.

I’m just glad he didn’t get creative and attempt to merge all three into one. I don’t know if I could have handled driving down the road when my 2 year old says, “Monkey f*ck cocks!” My head would have exploded from trying to control my laughter.