View from the North 40: A P-word by another name

I had heard about it, yes, but I did not want to actually hear it, you know, with my ears — or worse, see it with my eyes at the same time my ears were hearing it. I am, of course, talking about the news clip of presidential candidate Donald Trump calling fellow Republican Ted Cruz the P-word during a presidential rally.

Not that any of the P-words bother me in normal circumstances. Technically, I am a P-word. Also, I’m not running for president. Language like that from a possible future dignitary and I’m thinking, “Really? You’d talk to the queen with that mouth? The pope?”

I know it’s a double standard. Don’t care.

I’ve had a lot of pressure, from people who know me and my lack of social graces, to write about it, but I don’t feel like it. Besides, I see from the way people have been pussy-footing around the conversation that they don’t even want to say the P-word so I’m pretty sure they don’t want to actually read it.

I have decided, instead, to give you P-word petunias:

When my neighbors’ kids were very young, maybe 5 and 7, they were rather tiny children for their age and they had little tiny voices. The 7-year-old boy was a squeaky-voiced, miniature-adult farmer, and the girl’s dialogue, below, has to be read in a tiny girl’s falsetto, so loosen up those vocal chords.

Every once in a while the min-duo would trek over the hill to our house to say, hey. One idyllic summer evening they came over and we stood outside discussing whatever came to mind. And by “discussing” I mean they were shooting questions at me like they were cranking them out of a Nerf ball Gatling gun.

When my horses showed up, the kids’ line of questioning turned to this exciting new topic. What are their names? How old are they? What color is that one? That one? That one? Why is that one’s legs white and that one’s aren’t? What are they eating? Where do they go to the bathroom? Which ones are boys and which ones are girls? (And every parent see this coming, right?) “How can you tell?”

Now, in my family, we kids grew up with conversations about any topic with frank, technical language. Which means, I would normally use P-words and V-words as doctors intended them used for guy parts and lady pieces, but not everyone is raised this way. I just didn’t know if I wanted to have to explain to their parents later on how I could do such a thing as to give them that language to take to school.

Luckily, I’m a quick thinker, right.

I said that the boys have a bump on their belly, and pointed to one of the male horses.

Now, for those of you who don’t know, horses’ pieces and parts are located similarly to those of dogs, hence the bump on the belly.

“Ooh,” they said, absorbing the insiht. And while I was preoccupied patting myself on the back, their curiosity rekindled and I heard: “What do girls have?” from the squeaky-voiced mini-farmer.

It was at this point my wheels started to spin off. Female horse mare-bits are, let’s say, not very subtle.

While I could hear my brain channeling my dad’s grownup, teacher-ish voice — correct terminology and all — the other part of my brain (possibly the fear-center part) was imagining trying to explain why the little children in their itty-bitty voices repeated some kid-version of my words at school during show and tell come Monday.

“Well, uh, they, um, have, aah, a not-a-bump,” I said.

“Yeah, but what do they HAVE?” the squeaky-voice asked.

As if I hadn’t explained that clearly enough.

“Well, um, they, aah—”

And here’s where I got lucky again.

The little falsetto girl piped up at that moment and said, sounding like a micro-mini helium-filled teacher (start your falsetto here):

“My mom says girls have petunias.”

“Ooh,” we all said.

That’s right, small child, girls absolutely positively without a doubt have petunias.

(Saved by the falsetto one at [email protected].)