“Cock. Cock. Cock!”
Tod-lar ran from our bedroom through the dining and living rooms, back to our bedroom through the baby’s room and tangent bathrooms. Midway through his next lap, he threw up his arms and yelled “cock!” again like he’d just made a touchdown.
I thought at first he might be trying to say “chalk” or something. But usually when he’s mispronouncing a word he mumbles part of it so he sounds like Chevy Chase introducing his various aliases in “Fletch.” “Hi, I’m Mr. Humphena-man.” But he wasn’t doing that this time. Tod-lar was clearly saying c-o-c-k.
Where the fuck did he learn that word? I thought, lowering my head back towards my book.
Admittedly, I am a potty mouth by nature. I am after all, my father’s daughter. Why, just the other day Dad was telling me about his current job: “Those goddamn cocksuckers aren’t getting another fucking drop of my motherfucking sweat. They can kiss my motherfucking ass. Fuckers.” Add a Cuban accent and my father is Scarface with a Harvard degree.
So while the occasional “oh shit” may accidentally fly from my mouth in front of the children, “cock” does not. To me, this is a word reserved for porno actresses with bosoms the size of my husband’s head – the one on his shoulders, which happens to be exceptionally large.
Wait. Could Tod-lar have learned this word from Husband? No. It’s been well over a year since he used his “I’m going to the hardware store to get some big black calk” joke.
After several more laps through the house, Tod-lar stopped in front of me. “Cock, Mama. Cock!”
I was tempted to ask him if he wanted cock. He can say the phrase “I want,” but sometimes he’ll just name what he wants like “Milk, Mama. Milk.” I decided I didn’t want to know the answer but wondered if this somehow had something to do with him breastfeeding his blue bunny the other day.
Then it hit me. “Honey, are you trying to say cock-a-doodle-do?” Mimicking farm animals is a favorite pastime of his.
“Yeah!”
“Ooooh. Okay. Well, can you say “cock-a-doodle?”
“Cah-cah.”
That’s better.
