Trumped

And I don't mean The Donald-style. Unfortunately. In my 1100 sq. ft. house, I'd appreciate a gold-plated faucet everyone once in awhile. But I digress...

Let me back up. When I first met the man who would be my husband, his nickname was Uncle Remus. Not because he was a racist, but because he was a storyteller. The man could spin a web of character, plot, and conflict like nobody's business. He knew when to pause, which words to emphasize, and which words would paint the best picture of the tale he was telling.

Fast forward 15 years. Picture it: a little Mexican restaurant. A sweet, exhausted family of 4 sharing chips, salsa, and the ubiquitous cheese dip. My husband begins with a "You'll never believe what happened at the store today..."

Sometimes I tune out these days when he begins that way, but there was something in his voice that made us all perk up. I think it was about the time he got to the part about a man pissing in the corner of our restaurant.

That's right. A drunk/high/crazy man had walked into our restaurant, walked over to the back corner (yes, customers were not too far away), dropped trou, and proceeded to piss all over the back wall.

My husband saw it happening and had a shit fit! He started yelling and cussing and making the man clean up his own urine with the store mop.

I was laughing and nearly blowing chips and salsa out of my nose. And that's when my husband used his extraordinary story-telling skills to wow our 5 & 7-year-old kids: "Kids, I used bad words you've never even heard of before."

The kids' eyeballs got as big as saucers. Keep in mind that their list of bad words include hate, stupid, shut up, shut your mouth up, and idiot.

But that's when my 5-year-old baby, who had just started kindergarten, trumped his daddy.

"Daddy, did you use the F word?" he said sweetly.

"The WHAT word?" I asked unbelievably, not really expecting an answer.

"Fuckit. Did you say fuckit, Daddy?" my baby encouraged my husband.

That's right. Daddy was upstaged by a 5-year-old. Now he can never tell the guy-pissing-in-the-back-of-my-store story without following it up with the my-son-knows-the-F-word-and-tried-to-teach-it-to-me story.