My boys think ass is a very fun word to say and they try to slip it in anywhere they possibly can. Being the permissive parent that I am, I reprimand them but only really because they can't say it at school. After all, I don't really consider ass to be a "bad" word.

When I was in Texas I had the opportunity to go mall shopping with my beautiful SIL and we (ok, well, I, but hopefully we) had a great time at GAP. It's my favorite store ever and I got a few things for Little Miss Isabella and a ton of school clothes for the boys.

The woman who checked me out (ok, I know how that sounds, but I can't think of another way to word it) was a beautiful Iraqi woman dressed far too stylishly to be a GAP clerk. She was very taken with Izzy and spent several minutes playing with her and talking to her. She kept putting her fingers in Isabella's ears, which was weird to me since I know how gross the insides of her ears are, but maybe it was a cultural thing.

The clerk and I got to talking and when she learned my husband was in Iraq, she told me she would give me a little phrase to use with him, just for fun. She took out a piece of receipt paper and began writing, then stopped, smiled shyly, and said, "Oops. I wrote it in Arabic." She then wrote the word "keefak" for me and explained that it was a greeting like, "How are you?" She was very proud of what she had shared with me, as she was certain it would impress my husband.

Who it *really* impressed was my children, who were delighted to have discovered a word that wasn't "bad" that ended sounding very much like f*ck. "keeeeefaaaaaak!!" All day long. "Keefak" "Keefak" "Keefak"

Technically, this is not a bad word. But people who don't know what it means are certainly going to think the boys are saying something-f*ck.

And THIS is why my children are not allowed to learn any foreign languages.