When a first grader says, “Johnny called me the F-word!” I now know through careful interrogation it means ‘Fart’. I’ve learned the same way that the S-word for the playground set is ‘Stupid’. A word so bad that they don’t even want to give it an alternate is what I’ll call the K-word: ‘Kiss’.
At this point, I don’t hear much that surprises me. That said, as the fourth graders were entering their classrooms this morning, I overheard one boy say to another, in a loud and annoyed way:
“It was a metaphor!”
They disappeared before I could learn more. I’ll go to my grave wondering what they were talking about. But it sounds like we now have a new additon to the lexicon: the dreaded M-word.