Words

My wife and I are both passionate about words. We both studied journalism and we both write both for fun and profit. Finding just the right word for any given situation gives me something approaching a rush. I love the way words can convey such a powerful and accurate meaning when used properly. This even extends to crude words and swears. I love the way a perfectly timed "fuck" serves as a sort of punctuation, giving an otherwise innocuous sentence a certain pointed edge.

So, obviously, the fact that my daughter's language skills run ahead of the norm for her age group pleases me greatly. Even though she doesn't always pronounce things correctly she's already showing the ability to find just the right word for a given situation. And sometimes those situations aren't good ones. 

Hate. 

Stupid.

Jerk.

My initial reaction to hearing these words coming out of my daughter's adorable pie hole was to tell her those words weren't nice and she shouldn't use them. My wife rightly points out that such efforts are likely to be fruitless. She was kind enough not to point out that it also smacks of rank hypocrisy. 

But the more I think about it, the more I think I'm not so much bothered by the words as I am by the fact that my daughter feels the emotions that make such words necessary. She's three, for fuck's sake (see what I mean? Pointed!). Why is she feeling hate and anger like that?

Because she's a person, obviously. She's growing up. As much as I hate it, she's going to encounter stupid jerks. So she may as well know the words to describe it.