Wednesday, May 23, 2007

What Are They Teaching Them at That Junior High?

Lucas (13) and I were running an errand last night and he wanted to hear “that cool song about MTV with the cool guitar” at the begining.

“You mean, Money for Nothing by Dire Straights?” and I spin the dial on the iPod to the song.

“Yeah, that one!”

We listen to it for a while and it comes to the mildly offensive lyric:

The little faggot with the earing and the make-up
Yeah buddy, that’s his own hair
That little faggot got his own jet airplane
That little faggot, he’s a millionaire

I wasn’t going to censor the song, but I did feel kind of bad for singing it at the top of my lungs as we barreled down I-80.

“So Lucas, that’s not the nicest thing he could say there, you know.”

“Mhm. Yeah, uh-huh.”

“You know what that means, don’t you? Faggot?”

“Yeah, something about sticks.”

I turned the music down, “Really? That’s what you think that means? You’ve heard other people call each other faggot at school?”

“Shee-yeah, Dad. ALL the time. People call each other faggot all the time.”

“Bunch of sticks.”

“Yeah, seems kind of weird.”

“Lucas.”

“Yeah, Dad?”

“Lucas, technically, that is what the word means, a bunch of sticks. But it’s also mostly a highly derogatory and offensive word for homosexuals.”

“Oh! Well, everyone at school thinks it’s a bunch of sticks.”

“Nu-uh!”

“No! They totally do. Bunch of sticks! Someone looked it up, I think.”

So we had a little conversation about slang words and that he should NEVER call anyone that. And that fag was essentially the same thing, unless he was in England, in which case someone is probably just asking him for a cigarette.

“Which would be a problem, because I don’t smoke, Dad.”

I’m still wrapping my head around the fact that in this day and age a group of seventh graders could be so sheltered/protected/swathed in veils/oblivious that they wouldn’t know about that sort of slang. And I depend on the school system for a quality education! I pay my taxes! Who’s in charge of teaching these kids about Life and all its horrors?

I guess I have a calling in life, after all.

Jon scribbled this mess on 05/23/07 at 12:14 AM, best we can tell it fits in the category of Regular Post. This many folks had something to say about that, The permanent home of this entry is here: Link

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