In our home, we have two distinctions for withholding the truth. One version is called a secret (or a lie). Secrets are bad and we heavily discourage this type of sneakiness (except for mommy’s little beauty secrets, and those are between her and God). We have serious consequences in our family for telling lies of any kind.
The other type of truth withholding is a surprise. Surprises are good. In this case, the intention of the truth withholder is to simply bless the recipient, with zero malice on the agenda.
Now our daddy is the king of surprises. Tim loves to play tricks and create outlandish diversions to illicit a joyful response. But, sometimes he takes it a little too far (though he usually has the best of intentions) and by the time we are actually surprised, we might also be slightly pissed off.
Labor Day was a day for surprises. Both Tim and I wanted to create a memorable family day with the kids to celebrate the end of summer, thus the element of surprise was essential. We lounged around the house in the morning and finally got the whole family ready and into the Expedition by 10:00am. The kids knew food was on the agenda because we didn’t feed them breakfast, but this was the extent of their knowledge regarding the day.
About twenty minutes into the drive, I realized my husband was not taking the freeway to our Newport Beach destination, but was instead taking the scenic route along Pacific Coast Highway, a gorgeous drive, but double the amount of travel. I looked in the backseat and the kids seemed happy (for now) but I wasn’t too sure what would happen over the next hour without food.
Kyle started in on the complaining first. “Where are we going? How long is it going to take? I’m starving!” he whined.
Then Faith joined in, “My tummy hurts! How much longer?” she asked.
Tim just kept on driving and driving and ignored their comments. An hour and twenty minutes in to the drive and my own tummy was growling, but I knew we were close to the ferry and our destination on the Balboa Peninsula.
But Kyle was getting frustrated. “Where are we going?” he demanded frostily, devoid of any fun or frolic in his voice.
Tim (now cranky himself) shot back, “We are going to Long Beach and it will be another hour! Just stop your whining or I can let you out and you can walk from here.”
Both Kyle and Faith went quiet, but our sweet little baby Kolby piped in from the backseat, “F… You!”
Tim and I looked at each other in amazement. Then again we heard her little voice ring out even louder.
“F… You!”
At first we weren’t sure if we were hearing her correctly, but she continued her diatribe louder and with more intensity.
Tim and I, than Faith and Kyle burst into laughter. We laughed until our insides hurt and then we laughed some more.
Now generally we discourage foul language in our home. In fact, I’ve only heard my husband swear once or twice in our whole marriage. If a bad word flies out, it’s probably mommy that let it slip, but the F word isn’t really one I use. (If the baby had said the S word, everyone in the car would have called me out)
We think she might have been trying to say “off shoe” but we aren’t really sure.
Maybe baby Kolby simply had enough of daddy’s tricks and wanted to eat brunch? Either way, the truth is, she articulated what we were all thinking, maybe not in that vulgar of terms, but we were all pretty much done with daddy’s surprise of the day. We just wanted to eat.
So maybe surprises can go a little too far sometimes. And maybe we should keep an eye on our verbal (i.e. sailor mouthed) baby. She seems to be taking after her mother.
