Matilda stays home with me three days a week. I work; she plays like a normal kid. It’s a pretty good deal for both of us. I get to have her home to talk to and watch over, while she gets to have play with her friends and go swimming, when I get a modest amount of work done.

I’ve been working extra hours four days a week so that we can spend Friday together going to the zoo, science center or various other types of fun stuff.

Today, she dropped a bomb on me and let me know why parenting is a tough job.

It was humid today, with a threat of thunderstorm. Dark clouds hung low in the sky like, in an effort to show us who was in charge.

I was sitting at the computer, typing up information on one of the books we had worked on. We were fresh from the triumph of booking her birthday party at a local waterpark.

Matilda and her friend were sitting on the couch loading odd things into a small child’s purse. Important things like an inflatable frog, pop rocks, two small plastic watches and a small plastic whistle with the jingling ball missing.

Matilda went to close the purse, pinched her skin and, with the confidence of a forty year old, trampy woman exclaimed, “damn it!”

Immediately I flashed forward to the future. There she was, my beautiful daughter, in neon orange hot pants, a skintight Hooters shirt, smoking a cigarette, careful not to inflame the two cold sores on her lip nor ignite her carefully hair sprayed coif.

“See, Daddy,” she was telling me, “I got me a good job at the Hooters. It ain’t whorin’ myself. And just because Cletus is a carnie with not past don’t mean that we can’t get married.”

Snapping myself back into reality, I quickly ran down every instance where I used an expletive. They were many. I was guilty. Here it was, the moment of truth and I, the father of ill repute, had led my own daughter to this exact spot. How could I tell her she was wrong when I knew she’d just say, “You said it yourself!”

I was in a tight spot. I had to carefully move myself into a more comfortable position. But how? I had to admit my own guilt and tell her that I just wished her to have a better life.

A life free of the profane! A life free of expletives. A life without fear of being in a heady situation and saying to her schoolteacher, “You bet your ass two and two are four.”

The words hung in the air. There was a gasp from the friend, then silence. I turned towards the kids. Matilda had the same look as a condemned man who had just finished his last meal. I put on my Ward Cleaver face. Stern, but loving.

I called her to me and she came, slowly. She didn’t give me the teary doe eyes; I commend her for that. She knew she had done something wrong.

I explained to her that it was a bad word. I told her I knew that she probably heard it on TV, and from some of the older kids. “And,” I said, “I’ll bet you’ve even heard me say. Maybe even Grandpa or one of your uncles.” She nodded.

I told her that bad words were a sign that you couldn’t think of something smarter to say. I also explained that it was a very bad habit to get into and that if she ever caught me saying a bad word that he should remind me to find a better way to express myself.

She accepted that. I promised her I wouldn’t tell mom. I’ll let her find out for herself that when one of your kids does something like this that the first thing you do is to share it with everyone you know. Kids don’t understand that things like this are cute in an odd way.

To her, she has betrayed her parents and spoken the unspeakable. But it’s no big deal. She’ll say much worse to me in the future, including “Cletus and I are engaged.”

But, for now, I think she’s learned a lesson. And so have I. The boundaries are changing. And she, at the ripe old age of nearly seven, is going to begin to push them in different ways. She’s moved past the stage of jumping off the stairs because she isn’t supposed to. She’s investigating the taboo.

Though I’m disappointed, both in her, and myself I’m also a little proud. She’s growing up. And she’s exerting her independence. She’s trying new things. Granted, this time it was the wrong thing. But, your mistakes are what make you grow. If we never fail, if we never make a mistake, then we just aren’t trying hard enough.

Failure is the first step to success. I’m sure Einstein screwed up the Theory of Relativity a few times. I’m sure Shakespeare said to his mother “Thou clay-brained guts, thou knotty-pated fool, thou whoreson obscene greasy tallow-catch!”

It’s okay to screw up once in a while. I do. And damn it, I’m okay.