Poot and Cubby

Happy New Year!  We all know the new year is a time to make those pesky resolutions and decide (you know, for about a day or two) to be healthier, or quit an awful habit.  Maybe this year you want to quit smoking.  If this is the case, please, please don’t tell my daughter.  Confused?  Please, let me explain.

On Christmas Eve, my dad and sister decided to go outside for a cigarette.  My mom told Elliot that when they came back inside, she wanted her to say, “No smoking.”  Elliot, who believes my mom is a God, abided by her request.  The unfortunate (and hysterical) part was that she is still mastering the art of word pronounciation and no one could have predicted how she would say it.  My sister and dad re-entered the house to a toddler judgementally wagging her index finger and shouting, “NO FUCKING!”  Because her potty-mouthed parents are actually very good about avoiding the use of the dreaded F-word in front of her, I am certain it was Elliot’s inability to pronounce certain sounds that made “smoking” come out of her mouth in this way.  That, or the skill of potty-mouthery is an inherited trait that you just can’t fight.

As you can imagine, everyone laughed until they cried and Elliot became a one-trick pony saying the phrase over and over again just for shits and giggles.  The next few days, she would mutter it to herself out of nowhere and laugh as though she knew why it was so funny.  On Boxing Day, other family members who had heard the “no smoking” legend would bait the child into saying it while I half-laughed and half-shuddered at the thought of having to de-program my little comedy robot.  Luckily, there were no reports of her spreading the good word of abstinence (smoking, or otherwise) at daycare in the days that followed.  I can only imagine what the daycare staff would have thought she witnessed over the Christmas holidays to come up with that phrase.