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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 20, 2023

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Who wants to arrange play dates with the little tyke who innocently announces he needs to take a shit?

Apropos of nothing, I have an anecdote tangentially related to this. After moving from Korea to the US as a 1st grader, I was obviously taught English, but for whatever reason, my parents taught me that "shit" was the correct word for fecal matter. By the time I was in 3rd grade, I knew that "poop" was common term that kids used, but I had thought that it was the crude kiddy version of the word and that the technically correct term was "shit." So when my 3rd grade teacher asked the class one day "What smells bad in the woods?" (I don't recall the context), I dutifully raised my hand and said "shit," which resulted in uproarious laughter among my classmates and my teacher being absolutely flummoxed. I was genuinely confused at what was so funny or unexpected about what I said, and to my teacher's credit, she was quite understanding, and I didn't get in trouble, though I heard later that during some PTA meeting, she brought it up to my parents. Apparently my parents initially thought she was referencing me being a joker or something for bringing up fecal matter in reference to that particular question, rather than the use of a swear in class, which they only realized after my teacher explained to them.

I don't think it had much of an effect on my getting play dates, though, which I would guess was at a pretty typical rate for a boy that age.