if the word fits …

[Note: This story is unrelated to the Schmoop Saga that I’ve been writing lately. I’ll finish it soon. No, really I will.]
My sister sounded unusually cranky on the phone. That’s not true. It sounded usually cranky. She does not often call with peppy news.
“We can’t call Denise [her three-year-old daughter] a drama queen anymore,” she told me.
“Why not?”
“She got in trouble at school today. She called her teacher a drama queen.”

Okay, this is funny. Y’all agree with me, I am sure. It’s funny! A three-year-old who is possibly the Queen of Drama Queens calls her teacher a drama queen. I cannot help laughing, no matter how cranky my sister sounds.
“It’s not funny,” she told me, although you could hear the crankiness wavering somewhat. “I mean, I have to work with these people.” (My niece attends the same school where my sister teaches.)
“Well, is she?”
“Is who what?”
“Is her teacher a drama queen?”
“Actually, no. She’s pretty mild-mannered. But she told Denise to do something she didn’t want to do, and that was the worst thing Denise could think of to call her. So we had to go visit the school counselor and all and talk about it.”
“It could be a lot worse. I mean … drama queen.” I started laughing again.
“Right! This is all your fault, you started calling Denise that in the first place!” my sister shouted, although it was obvious she was amused too.
“But she is one! It’s a perfect name. And it’s not like it was a bad word, like bitch or –”
“Or horse piss! See, you did it again!” By now my sister is laughing.
“Okay, that one was not my fault either. He wasn’t three years old, he was old enough to know better.”
It has been nearly 15 years since the event my family calls the Horse Piss Incident, and I would like to tell this story plainly and clearly so that it can be established once and for all that it was not my fault.
I was in college at the time. My little brother had just started grade school, he must have been 7 or 8 years old. He was attending grade school down the block at the same Catholic school that my brother and sister and I all attended.
I was visiting my family and hanging out in the New Orleans area with my then-boyfriend Todd. I believe we were rummaging in my parents’ fridge looking for beer. My little brother was watching us. My dad’s beer selection was not very good—we could choose from such stellar beers as Miller Lite, Bud Lite, and maybe Heineken.
“I’m not drinking any of that horse piss,” was my comment on the beer selection.
“Horse piss?” my little brother asked. “Who’s horse piss?”
I rushed to explain.
“Yeah, ‘horse piss’ is what people call really gross light beer,” I explained. “But it’s not a phrase you should use in public. And it’s only to use about beer, not people. I shouldn’t have said it. I’m sorry. It’s not very nice.”
“Horse piss!” he said joyfully. “Tastes like horse piss!”
“Okay, that’s enough,” I said sternly. “Don’t tell anyone I said that in front of you.”
Shortly afterwards, we drove back to Baton Rouge and I completely forgot about the incident.
A few days later, my mom called me.
“Boy, are you in trouble. You are in big trouble,” my mom said over the phone.
“Oh, what now?”
“Your brother was sent to the principal’s office today. He got in a fight on the playground and called a little boy ‘horse piss’.”
Oh, shit.
“I told him that was for beer and not for people!”
“You did teach him that phrase!”
“For beer! Can’t he learn to use words correctly?”
“I can’t believe you are missing the point here. He’s not supposed to use the phrase at all.”
“I did tell him that.”
“And when Sister Mary X asked him where he’d heard such a word, he said, ‘My older sister Jette taught it to me.’ She was very, very disappointed to hear that about you.”
(Sister Mary X was the principal when I was in school there. She was about 80 when I was in school, when I was terribly goody-goody … and it was hard to believe she was still around. It is harder to believe that she finally retired last year. The school was still enforcing the rule forbidding women to wear pants on the school campus.)
“That little rat! He knew it was a bad word, I told him not to say it in public, and he knew better. He just wanted to get out of trouble.”
I have been getting flak about this incident from family members ever since. The family story implies that I taught him the phrase and I didn’t tell him he wasn’t supposed to say it. But honestly, what a dumb kid! Not only did he try to pass off the blame in a dumb way, but what annoyed me the most was that he used the term incorrectly. He’s lucky I forgave him and took him to see Army of Darkness later that year.
Now, many years later, I am about to get further black marks for the incredibly innocuous (and fitting) term “drama queen” as applied to my niece.
I think we’ll just have to settle for calling her a “pretty pretty princess” while rolling our eyes and hope that if she repeats the term, she won’t repeat the tone we used.
And I will just have to hope that no one brings any light beer around me while my nieces and nephew are in the room.