"What did he say?"
"Sounded like 'truck' to me…"
"Oh my god! That definitely sounds like…"
"I’m sure he said 'sucking' that time…"

And thus began the conversation I was hoping I would never have with my wife. I am not convinced my son did in fact drop the F-bomb recently, but it sounded pretty damn close, meaning in my better half’s opinion, daddy had some explaining to do...

Fair enough, because if Gabe has heard the word, chances are it came out of my mouth (or one of my brothers’ or friends’ gobs, I suppose) and so if anyone is charged with explaining to him why he should NOT be using the word in the company of others, it would be me.

But then again, how exactly am I supposed to explain it to him? It’s not as if he can hold a conversation yet… His vocabulary is expanding at a rapid rate (in the wrong direction if you ask my lovely wife), but his sentences are along the lines of “Come with me” and “What is that?”

I was still not convinced that Gabe was actually using the word in question, although I readily admit it did concern me that maybe, just maybe he could be.

So instead of trying to have the conversation with him off the bat, or freak out every time he said it, I listened in earnest, trying to work out when exactly he'd use it. If he was using a dirty word he sure as hell wasn’t using it in the right context!

You see, Gabe was not walking around merrily telling Granny to get f***d and he wasn’t turning the air blue when he couldn’t complete a puzzle. The way he dropped it into the conversation suggested that he wanted something when he said it. The fact that he was usually pointing confirmed my suspicions. Yes, Gabe was certainly using a word that sounded a heck of a lot like the F-word, but was asking for my phone.

I’m not completely sure how he got that confused, but chances are he saw me ranting about my Blackberry one day and never picked up on the "phone" part...

The crisis has been averted. I have now managed to teach my son the word "phone" to avoid any awkward situations in the future and more importantly I have kept my wife’s "I told you so" at bay.

But despite the happy conclusion, the episode was worrying enough to have me actively refrain from using any cuss words at home… well, at least not when my son is within earshot. I don’t want to be the father of the kid who teaches all his mates the F-bomb.