kids say the darndest things; yeah right!

When I went back to Malaysia last summer (2007), Mama's youngest sister and family came and visit us at the hotel where we were staying. She has four girls, three whom I've already met before I flew off to France, third one was still a baby back then. So, that leaves me the fourth one and I met her for the first time last year. But I'm not going to talk about the fourth girl. Let me bring your attention to the third princess. She was about four years old when she came and visit us last year. As usual, when you haven't met someone for quite some time, you'd be surprised at how much they've grown, what they look like, etc. The same thing happened to me. This little cousin of mine, has, of course, grown up since the last time I saw her and unexpectedly, she has also developed a potty mouth. She was friendly and really hyper, I mean VERY hyper. She kept jumping up and down, and running around, and also kicking people. I had no idea why she did that though. Ieqa and I tried having a conversation with her, asking her this and that. It went smoothly at first but suddenly;

Little cousin : Kau bodoh!

Ieqa : .... (!!) Kau lah bodoh!

And this little potty mouth blurted other bad words that shouldn't be coming out of a four year-old girl. I was flabbergasted! Ieqa and I looked at each other, awkwardly. We started to ignore her. When she started to notice that she was being ignored, she began kicking around, trying to grab our attention. Unfortunately, one of her kicks hit me. It got me pretty mad, but I couldn't yell at a little girl, could I? So, I grabbed her legs, looked at her and said;

Moi : Tak baik sepak-sepak orang, Tuhan marah. Berdosa tahu! Kalau suka sepak orang, nanti kaki awak jadi besar, macam kaki gajah. Nak berdiri pun tak boleh. Lepas tu, takde siapa nak kawan dengan awak. Haa, nak jadi macam tu?

She stared at me, quietly. Her eyes were big and teary, as if she was in shock.

Little cousin : Mak!!!

Okay, I didn't mean to scare her off. I like children, I always do. But, I cannot stand kids like that. I wasn't taught to be a potty mouth and rude to the elders. I was always taught poise and grace (NOT!), eventhough I turn out to be clumsy, disorganized and a total klutz! Nevertheless, I wouldn't swear in front of the elders and definitely wouldn't kick anyone at all, except my siblings, because that's how we get along. ;-)

I told Mama about what had happened, and she said that my little cousin might have picked up the bad words from the other children she's staying with while her parents go to work. Oh, blame it on working parents! I have working parents too, oh no, I have workaholic parents. But there's no reason for any of us to develop potty mouths. Everytime my siblings and I said any kind of bad words in front of my parents, Mama would say; "Mama cili mulut nanti!" My brother, Raffy thought Mama wouldn't dare do something like that and tried her patience, and he got what he deserved. He never cursed since.

Talking about behaving oneself in front of guests or other people, I was always taught to sit quietly when visiting relatives or friends, or when we have guests, so that I don't embarrass my parents. If I did, Abah would threaten to leave me at Zoo Negara (we lived in Taman Zooview, in case you're wondering and Abah did leave me there once because I skipped class when I was five!) on our way back home, so that scared the daylights out of me. Kids nowadays don't do that anymore. They would shamelessly barge into my room and mess around with my things. Because of that, I have to lock my room whenever we have kenduri, if I forgot to do it, Abah would lock it for me. See, how these post-modern kids behave! I like kids, don't get me wrong, I just do not like the way they behave. Obviously, not all children are like that, just a minority.

Anyways, I'm going to stop babbling about how rude children nowadays really are. I think you already get the point. So, yeah. Be MEAN to your kids so that they learn how to behave in the future!

Juliette xx
Listening to : Eenie Meenie - Craig David