It's a fact of life that you can't choose when, writes ADAM BROPHY
‘DAD, DO you know what a compound word is?” Being a freelance editor, I have a vague idea, but don’t want to either show off or be shown up by a seven year old for getting it wrong.
“Eh, no,” I give her an intro.
“Dad, it’s when two words are joined together. Like when snow and man make snowman.”
She is reading her book in bed and trying not to look like she thinks she’s red hot. I tell her she’s red hot and she nearly bursts trying not to look like she’s bursting.
“What else you got, kid?”
She has nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs. I’m impressed. I thought school was all about flower pressing and playground chasing with a Christmas show thrown in for good measure. Next thing she’s rummaging in my pocket for coins to demonstrate her sums while pretending not to demonstrate her sums.
Maybe I’m not praising this one enough, I might have overpraised the bigger one and run out of steam before her sister got moving. Either way, I like the grammar thing.
The fact that one day she may be able to parse a sentence fills me with a disproportionate amount of joy, mainly because she’d be far better off learning how to do something useful and getting a job in an industry that could support her.
The next couple of weeks include random assertions on occasional words. She gets a giggle out of it. She makes a point of impressing me while asking for things she wouldn’t usually be allowed: “Can I have a delicious [adjective], flavoursome [adjective] 99 [noun] please?”
“Go on so. Brat.”
All this is well and good until we’re on a long drive home one night. The grammarian and her sister are conversing in pleasant tones. There is a lull.
“What do you call two animals that are stuck together?” pipes up the younger.
“Dunno,” we reply.
“Compound animals,” she says, and falls around the back seat laughing. The two of them launch into a prolonged bout of hysterics on how dogs compound to have puppies.
This leads to a semi-serious discussion on how Daddy will have to compound Mummy if they are ever to have a baby brother or sister. We will, in effect, be compound people.
My worry is “compounded” by the certainty that she is going to bring this fresh insight into school – if not the classroom, then certainly the playground.
I am already predicting the indignant grammar-related phone calls I may receive from certain parents who have managed to dodge the topic until now. Oh well, I think, worse grammatical errors have happened at sea.
The call, when it comes, is a text: “Oh my God, your daughter just told mine and a friend that when two people are stuck together it is called compounding. The friend then told her, no, it was mating. Am trying my best not to laugh. X.”
Fortunately this was friendly fire, the tone emphasised by the ‘X’ at the end. There are certain houses where the same discussion may not have gone down so well. Kisses may not have been thrown my way.
What I like about the discussion reported above is the earnestness with which seven year olds will discuss sex. The problem with modern parenting, where we psych ourselves up to talk honestly to kids about anything they ask with a straight face, is that they take our answers away, massage them and deliver them to everyone in their social sphere with the same straight face.
As such, a sort of demented, Chinese whispers facts-of-life reporting occurs. You have all these small kids running around talking about mating and compounding as if they’re old hands at the topic and then crying because their buddy stole their playdough.
Fortunately, the younger thinks it’s all hilarious. I find this heartening. Sex is the funniest thing in the world. From our first tenuous grasp of it, to the rabid pursuit of it, the disastrous early (and later) attempts at it, supposed sexual maturity and then the arrival of children like a crazy punchline to a prolonged, lifelong joke.
She would do well to laugh and spread the laughter among all her friends. She would do well to laugh – because that’s the only sex-related activity she or her sister will ever be participating in.