Dam or Damn

I picked my nephew up from school yesterday when he discovered some kids book in my car with the words "mad scientist" on it. Well smartypants is learning to read and decided that he found out that mad spelled backwards is dam. He thought he was bad with his new word. I explained to him that dam is a word and it is what beavers make in a river or stream to stop the water. I also explained to him that we really should not go around saying dam because it is also means a bad word when we put a n on it. One may ask, how does he know that word anyways.....Well you can blame his Nanny because this summer she hit the fence and was mad and used the one with the N on it. He repeated it and received a lecture. Also his Nanny and Bebob were having a heated argument one day when I took him outside in the rain so he would not hear it but munchkin was listening through the storm door when his Nanny said it in anger again. In her defense, that is the worse word she knows and it only comes out when she is mad. I found out later that his mommy uses it too in a fit of anger. SHHH!

On with the story, so he sits in the back seat saying...Oh Dam, Oh Dam, Dam. I turned around and told him that we do not say that word and he knows that and that I was just trying to explain the difference because he is so smart now. He looked at me with a straight face and informed me that he was not saying the Dam with the n on it but the beaver dam. I thought I was going to bend over laughing but I kept a straight face and gave a stern lecture. He may be smart but not smart enough for me to explain the context of what he was saying. He just thought he was getting away with a bad word.

Ohh to get in the mind of a child.

This reminded me of a story of me as a child in church. I was questioning the use of the word a$$. I did not understand why it was in the Bible but I could not say it. I just did not understand. My dad tried to explain to me that the use of it in the bible as another name for a donkey. ( He used the word in his sentences, though) Then he explained that it is a derogatory word now in today's society.
Well the next week in Wednesday night church, the subject was things we want God to forgive us of or others of. Well my mind was going. I knew my dad had used that word to explain to me the difference in context. In my mind I knew he had said the bad word. I wrote on my paper that my dad needed to be forgiven for bad words. The next day I was telling my mom all about Wednesday night church and forgiveness and I told her that I wrote my Dad's name down for saying the A word when he talked to me about it. I also told her the leaders were going to post them in the foyer so the church can see we are learning and asking for forgiveness. She about went through the roof. Needless to say a few phone calls later and my forgiveness poster was intercepted. I was still clueless as to why she was so upset that I had written for the whole church to see that my daddy needed forgiveness for saying bad words. I was being oh so honest on my forgiveness project.