My Mother’s Changing Vocabulary in Her 90s

If you’re like me, you were brought up with certain standards.  One of those standards may have been “no rude words in this house, thank you very much!”  Then your mouth would probably have been washed out with soap, after getting a swift clip round the ear followed by a kick up the rear from your father.  However, that seems to be changing, especially as far as mum is concerned…

I was brought up with four brothers, two of whom were ring-ins when mum remarried after she and my father divorced (but that’s another story).  Having four brothers around me meant that I heard certain words, not that I used them myself…then (cough).  “Ladies do not speak like that,” was the mantra I heard repeatedly when I was young and impressionable.

Thus I was rather bemused, to say the least, when in our usual Sunday phone call me sainted mother blithely referred to a particular politician as a dickhead.  I was very proud of my restraint in not reacting to this observation.  Another time she was telling me of someone who was becoming a boring old fart, then in another conversation some weeks later I was told of someone who needed a bucket of Ritalin up their arse!

It was obvious that my brothers were being very open in their use of adjectives in my mother’s hearing.  So far, she has not come out with the good old Anglosaxon four letter expletive that is so common in speech nowadays. 

Although talking of expletives, when she was a lot younger…about 80 or so…she informed her third husband (hereinafter to be referred to as The Third to protect my butt in case either of them read this), “H…you’re p*ssed,” this said in a very disapproving voice.  The Third didn’t bat an eyelid but rather indigently denied the charge…using the same adjective, I might add.   This totally out of character exchange from both of them caused me to waste mouthful of very good wine by spraying it all over the place.

On that occasion when I probably looked rather like a stunned mullet, after I’d finished choking that was, mum (rather defensively, I thought) insisted that at her age she could say whatever she like.  There’s no way I was going to argue with her…we didn’t dare argue with her when we were young and I wasn’t about to rock that particular boat.

God help us if she does come out with a stronger expletive…I don’t think I’d survive the shock.  The thing is, I think me sainted mother secretly enjoys shocking us when she comes out with something that, to us, is totally alien to the mother we know.  But…I swear I saw a gleeful glint in her eye when she was castigating The Third for imbibing too much…

Have your parents shocked you by saying something totally out of character?  I think we could have a great conversation about it all.