Things I've Gotten In Trouble For Saying

One time I said that my strapping, six-foot-four cousin would get raped by a Smurf and it would turn his butt blue. His mother did not like that one. (Normally I do not at all like rape jokes, but when the rapist is imaginary, when it could literally never happen in real life, I think that's a little different. For example, when God raped Mary...)

When I was ten years old, I screamed, "Who's your mama?!" in a department store and beat the air with a giant spatula. I'd like to say it was my immature ten-year-old friend who put me up to it, but it was actually my mother's immature thirty-year-old friend.

I told my brother that a race-car driver was called a pimp. "I'm a pimp too!" he screeched to my dad, with all the enthusiasm of a naive six-year-old.

When I was in elementary school (at a Christian school) we were having a serious discussion about heaven and the afterlife. It was refreshing that the teacher seemed to be honest with us, letting down her religious facade and expressing her own uncertainties. "But what if it's not true?" I asked. "What then?"
"So what? You've lived a good life," she snapped. "Now take out your history books." Just like that, the emotionally honest discussion was over.

At a family reunion when I was seven, an older cousin kept teasing and tormenting me after I had told him repeatedly to stop. I called him the devil to his face. My reasoning went thus: "He is hurting my feelings and it doesn't bother him at all. In fact, he likes it! He likes hurting my feelings, therefore he is just like the devil."
I apologized later, to save my own skin, but to this day I am not sorry I said it. When a child is in tears and calling someone the devil, a monster, Hitler, etc, or saying that they are afraid of someone, that child is hurting immensely inside. If their hurt is ignored, belittled, or punished, it can stay with them for the rest of their lives.

The cousin with the blue butt wasn't the devil, by the way. To a lesser extent, I sometimes think I'm Blue-Butt's devil. Fortunately, none of my teasing has ended in tears so far. I like to think I know when to stop.

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