Julie Jay: Some new words are more welcome than others

Staying in both their respective homes this week, nobody is more delighted than his two grandparents, my mother and Fred’s father, whose mutual delight is visceral when Number Two waddles out to them in the morning, arms outstretched, chanting their monikers like an adorable — if slightly snotty — dawn chorus.

Conversely, Number One is also learning new words, but the effect is utterly polar because these are not necessarily words that anyone would be encouraged to use in an office setting.

In truth, I’m referring only to one new word used in a singular instance. Yet it is also one which I couldn’t brush to one side as banter, despite supposedly building my career on dealing confidently with any heckle that comes my way.

At the risk of inserting myself as a victim in this narrative, the word itself was certainly not warranted by the circumstance and was totally undeserved by little old me, who is just out here in her three-day-old leggings and unbrushed hair doing her best.

The insult itself was more akin to something my late father might have hurled back in the days whenever he was less than impressed with the courtesy on display from people driving cars with Dublin registration plates.

‘Typical Dub,’ my dad would sigh, despite driving with a Dublin reg plate himself and the offending vehicle displaying a ‘Kerry for Sam 2006’ bumper sticker. I can understand his reg plate blindness, given that accepting a fellow Kerryman could be guilty of taking up a yellow box would have been far too confronting for a man who prized road etiquette above the Constitution in terms of national importance. Some other words would be muttered under his breath, and I would make a mental note to refrain from overstaying my welcome in yellow boxes in the future.

Sadly, the ‘Dub’ word was not the insult of choice chosen by my four-year-old, but rather another word which was even more cutting and left both myself and his doting grandmother, who was also present for the incident, a little taken aback.

For a bit of background here, during our visits to Nana’s, we have started to frequent the library more and more, given that it is a handy way to wile away an hour and, like peanuts in a Texas dive bar, the crayons are always free-flowing.

My crime was the following: having insisted it was time to leave the library, I made the miscalculation of informing Number One when we were outside the building that a trip to the shop for provisions was called for before we continued to Nana’s.

The tantrum was short but effective and involved a lot of high-pitched objections from Number One, who was quite frankly getting on my last wick as I strapped Number Two into his pushchair.

Of course, because I am a millennial parent, rather than express my frustrations, I instead gave a weak: ‘Come on darling, there’s a good boy,’ in another example of the fine line between denial as to what is happening in the present tense and manifesting the behaviour we wish to see in the future.

This seemed only to incense my little fella further, who proceeded to turn around and inform me, in no uncertain terms, that I was an “idiot.”

He knew he had said the wrong thing straight away, in the same way, your husband might know he has said the wrong thing when he has announced he fancies your sister.

“Where did you hear that word?” I asked him, bending down to his level, Princess Diana style.

“I didn’t say a bad word,” Number One contended, about as convincing as when your husband insists he doesn’t fancy your sister.

We trudged to the shop, and I put on a front of normality despite feeling mortally wounded. The squeak of our antiquated buggy served as a suitably pathetic soundtrack to my pity party. My child had called me an idiot, and I had most certainly failed as a parent.

Later that night, Number One crawled onto my lap for cuddles, and I asked him what he had called me earlier because I am great at letting things go like that.

“I didn’t call you a name,” he mumbled unconvincingly. “I just said I love you.”

Of course, we all know this is not actually what happened, but at that moment, burying my head in his wonderfully nit-free hair, I chose to believe him because we all have moments where we lose our temper and let ourselves down, whether we are raging at the man in the yellow box or raging at our mother for having the audacity to suggest a trip to the shop for milk.

“He could have called you worse,” a friend noted when I informed her the following day, which I think is a slippery slope upon which none of us want to embark.

On the plus side, Number Two has started to say ‘love’, which I presume is shorthand for ‘I love you’, though if my four-year-old’s definitions are anything to go by, the baby could just be calling me an idiot.