So she leaned in real close, a nervous smile all over her face, and whispered into my ear: “sexyyyyyyy.” (8/12)

“That’s okay,” I assured her. “Just say it once, and I promise not to be mad. I just can’t think of what the word could be.” “Can I whisper it to you?” “Sure.” “In your ear?” “Yes, you can whisper in my ear. What’s the word?” (7/12)

That stumped me. I wracked my brain trying to think of such a swear word, and couldn’t. “What word is that?” I asked her. K’s eyes grew wide. “I can’t say it!” she protested. “It’s a bad word!” (6/12)

That elicited giggles aplenty. “What about the S word that ends with T?” asked the eldest. “That one too.” More giggles. But then my youngest, five-year-old K, asked, “What about the other S word? The one that ends with an ‘eeeeeee” sound?” (5/12)

No, I told them, that was when I was in college. But that didn’t stop them from pressing on, their hearts filled with mischievous delight at the thought of dad swearing. In hushed tones, 7-year-old E asked: “Did you say the F word? The one that ends in K?” “Yup,” I admitted. “I sure did.” (4/12)

That night, the kids asked me if I recalled anything from kindergarten. E, my eldest, specifically wondered if that was the time I dropped the Very Heavy Chair on my toe. They loved that story because I admitted that upon dropping said Heavy Chair, I said a large number of bad words. (3/12)

Some background first: my wife and I taught the girls that they should be judicious with profanity, because some people, e.g. grandma, found bad words offensive. But it was fine to swear in the right circumstances, and one of those circumstances was suffering a painful injury. (2/12)

Story time! I’m going to tell you about one of the funniest, most ridiculous moments of my journey as a parent. My two daughters were 7 and 5 years old at the time, and I was telling the kids stories at bedtime. (1/12)

Ok, having held my nose and written a single self-promo post, now I'm going to do others-promo: I'm currently reading Saint Death's Daughter by C.S.E. Cooney, and my gods it's glorious. Cooney writes prose that will make you sigh and lament, "If only I could write sentences like those."

Alas, my anecdatum is the opposite. Books sales dropped off a cliff exactly when I mostly abandoned "X" because of its Nazi-bar squick. In fairness, that may be 'cause most of my little slice of indie-fantasy-book community is still largely over there. Still, I have high hopes for Bluesky!