Daddy?

Word of the Week is intended for mature audiences only and is specifically designed to be read by adults and therefore may be unsuitable for children under 17. This program may contain one or more of the following: crude indecent language (L), explicit sexual activity (S), or graphic violence (V). 

Editor's note: If you are Jackson’s grandmother, you may not want to read this one.

As I noted last week, Jackson and I spent last weekend in Vegas. Our Vegas trips have been an annual event for the past three years. It’s a great time for us to go away together and gives us the opportunity to connect outside of the hustle and bustle of work, school and the city in general. Although Vegas is more of an adult city, there is plenty for Jack and me to do, such as renting exotic cars for a few hours, trying west-coast restaurants like In-N-Out Burgers and Fat Burgers, and simply just hanging by the pool.

As early risers, Jack and I were wide awake around 5 am local time and headed down to Starbucks to get our morning started. Heading back up to our room, vittles in hand, a prostitute propositioned me while I was WALKING WITH JACKSON. “Hey, baby, you looking for a party,” she asked while holding a bottle of Patron in her right hand. And, she was a prostitute right out of central casting. Whatever images are conjured in your mind when reading Vegas prostitute are 100% right. To be clear, Jack and I were walking together side-by-side. And although Jack is turning fourteen next month, he’s a very young fourteen. Like, he still-showers-with-the-bathroom-door-open young.

When I asked Jackson if he knew what just happened, he mumbled yes. Do you know who she was? And he whispered the words every father wants to hear “Daddy, she is a prostitute.”  He was clearly stunned and when we got in the elevator he said “I didn’t think it would be that obvious.” I explained that sometimes life really isn’t that complicated.

Unfortunately, this was not the most uncomfortable conversation we had over the weekend. While taking a few laps in the hotel’s lazy river, music was utz-utzing in the background. I tuned the music out but Jack didn’t. The opening lines of the song, which I later learned was Lil Jon’s Get Low, are “To the window, to the wall! Til the sweat drop down my balls Til all these bitches crawl,” which then leads into the chorus — “Til all skeet skeet motherfuckers, all skeet skeet god damn!”

Jackson looks at me and earnestly asks “Daddy, what is skeet.” The easiest thing to do would have been to lie to him and say I don’t know. But I did know and had long ago decided to be open with Jackson regarding his curiousity around sex. “Skeet, Jackson, is a slang term for ejactulation.  But, in these lyrics I can’t tell if he’s using skeet as a verb, noun, or somehow as an adjective. (It’s always good time for grammar!!!). The look on his poor, little face.

I went to Vegas with the hopes of strengthening my relationship with Jackson, I’m worried it’s worse now.

Verschlimmbessen

making something worse during the act of trying to improve it.

German - the verb verschlimm means “to make things worse” and the verb verbessern means “to improve”)