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It’s All Greek to Me

On August 26, 2010, in Family, Life, by Rosie

In the last adventure of Pip and Pop Jones, we discovered the girls’ interest in swearing, particularly ‘what are the F and C words. You may remember that they knew the F-word already, probably gleaned from listening to commercial radio and an eclectic range of music (that’s what I like to tell myself, anyway, coz I don’t fucking swear!)

The C-word was a nonevent. It wasn’t revealed, they don’t know it yet (thank fuck) so they decided to devise their own, in Pop’s words ‘C-word, swear word’.

It was cutter.

As in ‘up your cutter’, ‘for cutter’s sake’, ‘who the cutter cares?’ OR the really ribald version ‘oh cutter! With thorns!’

Pop Jones made me laugh again this week with her regaling of a anecdote from kinder. She attended pre-school a few years ago and made close friends with Kiki (not her real name.) Kiki is second generation Greek. Her parents speak the language at home, Kiki knows some words, but at pre-school age, didn’t read or write it. She visited our home often, is a gorgeous girl and still comes to play on the holidays.

Sadly, Pop and Kiki attend different primary schools

Yesterday morning, Pop Jones snuggles into bed and starts to chat. Why on earth kids think you want a full-on discourse about things that happened when they were four at that time of the morning, I don’t know. Anyway, she started talking about Kiki and how she knows lots of words of Greek, how she has a strong culture (as do Mario, Tu, Elena and Vovo in her class).

Then, Pop tells me that ‘we don’t really have a culture, mum!’

At 6.30 am, the only culture I have is viticulture if I’ve had a glass or two of red wine the night before. Frankly, I don’t care about culture much before midday, for the love of a sleep in!

Trying to mumble an explanation about Australian culture and our ancestors, I turn over to face the wall, hoping Pop might realize that we still have another half-hour in bed and that she can, in fact STFU any time she likes!

Not going to happen!

She is totally disinterested in my garbled speech about Australian culture, so she starts to say that she feels lucky that Kiki taught her one word in Greek for the entire two years of their stay in pre-school.

‘It’s the only word I remember. I think it’s the only word Kiki knows,’ Pop enthuses, as I wonder what STFU is in Greek.

‘Oh?’ I ask, not knowing any Greek, let alone the expression to silence her.

‘Yep,’ she says proudly. ’It’s naked. I know how to say naked in Greek!’

Oh, that’s lovely, I think to myself. At least she’ll be quite social if ever she pops over to the Greek Isles. Dearie me. It seems that Pop Jones only ever wants to learn and retain the important words in life!

‘That’s nice, love,’ I say to her, all the while being grateful I slept in pyjamas rather than a birthday suit.