Happy Mother's Day!

The Fam watched Ghostbusters on Friday night. It came out when I was about six so you can't blame me for not quite remembering how scary some parts were - luckily, it seems as if Small Fry hardly even noticed. He was quite taken with it, actually. The past two days he has been all about calling The Ghost Bustards:

'Hey, who would you call if you saw a ghost?' 'Ghost Bustards!'
'Who would you call if you saw a monster?' 'Ghost Bustards!'
'Who would you call if you saw a zombie?' 'Ghost Bustards!'

He talks big but in reality, if there's something weird and it don't look good, this is more along the lines of what actually goes down:

'Moooooooom! Come wipe my buuuuuuuutt!' 

Law of averages and all.

Really, what interested me the most about Ghostbusters wasn't that Small Fry is immune to fear - lawd help us, we already knew that - but that there was quite a bit of, er, "language" in the film, and I could judge by Medium Fry's reaction which terms she was familiar with and which ones she wasn't. All manner of things (I admit!) I routinely let slip didn't warrant so much as an eyebrow raise from her, but there were a few unique phrases in there as well at which she would whip her head around to see if I had heard that she had heard what she thought she had heard - if you hear what I mean. For instance, it's apparent that I don't say "dick" as much as Bill Murray does.

At one point a while back I considered all the most useful things I had learned from my parents, in order that I might pass them on to my kids in turn. Of all the handy skills I picked up as a child, I distinctly remember having the best vocabulary in grade one, as demonstrated during the swearing contests we held under the big red slide at Oman School. That earned me a lot of street cred among the other six-year-olds. (I almost don't want to name names here, but I'd also hate to deprive anyone of their rightful honours so close to their special day so... thanks, Mom!) Thus, when Medium Fry came home one day confused by why other kids thought the word "wiener" was so funny I immediately thought to myself: I really need to be more vulgar around the house. If you happen to be striving to achieve similar parenting goals, I found Ghostbusters to be a pretty accurate gauge of my progress on that front.

In summary, the primary conclusions reached during the most recent Fam movie night:

1. You might as well resign yourself to the fact that your children are going to have a wildly different view of their upbringing than you are;

2. I guess I'll have to try working creative synonyms for male genitalia into conversation with my 11-year-old a bit more; and

3. Who ya gonna call? Probably your mom.