holding your peace

This weekend, my friend Gwen was telling me about her nephew. He's two and, apparently, has learned a new word which has become his favorite in the whole English language. The word being 'calculator'. Now while this word is most likely to be very mundane to most, to a two year old like Gwen's nephew, this becomes one hell of a great word...and she said that every other sentence out of the boy’s mouth simply had to include some type of reference to 'calculators'.

My little brother went through the same 'favorite phrase' phase when he was about six or seven. While watching a movie on TV…most likely The Toxic Avenger, or something like that…he heard the phrase 'decomposing internal organs', and this became his mantra for the next several weeks. Every event or situation was somehow going to lead to someone's internal organs decomposing. It became especially tiresome for my mom who would often be told by my little brother that, "if I eat this broccoli and meatloaf for dinner, my internal organs are going to decompose!’

Of course, as adults, our favorite words tend to be of the four-letter variety, but wouldn't it be great to tell the guy that just cut us off on the highway to 'go stuff a calculator up one of your decomposing internal organs!' And every week, we could tell those people who piss us off, to go stuff some new object up a different body part…all depending on what our favorite words of the week are.

And as kids, there are just so many words to learn...words that are just waiting to become a new favorite and be used in practically every conversation. Words on labels. Words heard on television. Even words found in the oddest places. Like this little kid named Matthew, who was in my kindergarten class years ago, and asked me one day what an 'elementopie' was. I gave him a quizzical look and asked, 'do you mean an elephant?'

And in an exasperated tone, he told me, 'NO! An elementopie...you know, A. B. C. D. E. F. G. H. I. J. K. Elementopie.'

And, to a five year old, it made perfect sense that whoever created the alphabet stuck some large word right in the middle. This separation of the beginning letters from the ending letters being the most logical thing in the world…because how else are we supposed to keep them in order?

When I was about four, before leaving on a long trip, my mom would always ask me if I had to go to the bathroom before we loaded up into the car...a perfectly reasonable mom request. So I'd stop whatever I was doing and give the question some serious thought. And while I was gauging the pee level of my bladder, trying to estimate whether the need was bad enough to stop what I was doing or if I could hold out on what would surely be a five minute trip in the car...because when you're four, the typical thought is that cars take you places fast, so surely anywhere you’re going couldn't last much longer than five minutes…so I’d tell her that ‘no, I was okay’, and she’d say, 'well, go now or forever hold your peace.'

Which made absolutely no sense at all to me. I'm sure that I had some concept of 'peace' but how the hell were you supposed to hold it? It wasn't some object that you could pick up off the floor and stash under the bed. So, I figured that what my mom was saying was, 'go now or forever hold your penis'…because this made perfect sense. As everyone knows, the kid approved method of pee prevention is the crotch grab, preferably with an accompanying knee squeeze. And as every four year old will tell you, all pee can be stopped by forceful squeezing. And for years, I thought my mom was telling me that once I got into that car, all my bathroom privileges were forever forfeited and I was doomed to an eternity of 'penis holding' if the urge to pee ever struck.

Though, even at four, I knew she was lying. Because, usually ten minutes into the car trip, I would suddenly have to pee really, really bad. And that 'forever holding my penis' threat went right out the window as my parents would pull off the side of the road.

Because even the best penis holder in the world can't keep pee inside of a four year old. And my parents seemed to feel that it was better for all of us if I peed in the weeds alongside the mile 70 marker on the turnpike, rather than on the seat of the car.