No, I do not have a "potty mouth" around my children. I have been known to drop a few choice phrases among good friends, but I'm not even close to being called "vulgar."
"Bah!!! Mom. You owe me fifty cents!" That's the fine for bad language in our household. The money is dropped into a transparent plastic jar and isn't emptied until it is full.
"I don't owe YOU, I owe the JAR. And that money's for the whole family, smartypants.When it's full, we all get to decide what to do with it." If it were fifty cents per child per offense, I'd be living in a cardboard box.
You see, I think I might have Turret's Syndrome. Except only when I'm asleep.
I have been awoken many times by the pounding on my bedroom door and pleading by my children, "Mom, stop swearing!! MOM! Please! You said the "f" word like ten times!!!" Last night, I felt someone's hand clamp over my mouth and then, "Shut up!!! Mom, you HAVE to stop!!!!!"
Nobody ever believes me. At least not until they sleep with me. I've always been one to slumber soundly and peacefully. But my dreams tend to be realistic, vivid and often times violent. I remember my dreams easily, even from when I was a child. I'm still shaken by the one I had when I was three or four where my parents and I were kidnapped by indigenous natives in the rainforest and locked in a suspended bamboo cage from the treetops. I awoke the next morning lying in the fetal position against my parent's bedroom door.
I am often fighting for my life or the safety of others when dreaming. I have snatched my son from a raging flood and fled from a 747 as it crash landed on the phone booth I had been previously been calling home. My crazy aunt has driven us off a bridge and my own father sent the car into a large body of rapidly moving water. Somehow, I always manage to unbuckle the car seats or shout life-saving directions and I emerge the hero. Unfortunately, I tend to vocalize while I'm dreaming and my "dreaming" personality tends to be more like Tony Soprano than I care to admit.
For example, I dash into a public restroom only to find no doors on the stalls, toilet paper rolls bare, and toilets FULL. When I finally discover a decent one, people become the problem. They might cut in line or take my last tissue, take out their digital camera or sit down for a rest! "You mother*******!! Give me my god**** tissue you a**hole!"
In last night's fiasco, all the guests at my son's birthday party kept eating their pizza in my pool. I repeatedly ask them nicely to get out and eat in the kitchen, but now my new pool is covered with a greasy, orange sheen and filled with gooey, yellow globs. "Get out you a**holes!! You're all a**holes! " (According to T., who audibly "witnessed" the entire scene.)
When I ask one of boys what I said, their eyes get wide and they grin embarrassingly, "Mom, I could get in a lot of trouble for saying that." Sometimes I'm yelling so loudly I actually wake myself up. Sure, I feel bad, but what can I do? It's not like I have any control over it. That's what I keep telling the kids. How can it count if I don't know I'm saying it? Which is why our swear jar isn't a fair representation of the cursing in our house.
I've thought of duct taping my mouth shut when I sleep. My white-noise maker is turned up almost all the way so the kids won't hear me. I should be in one of those "sleep studies." Maybe some scientist can figure out why I do this.Could it be the snacks I eat before bed?
No comments:
Post a Comment