Yes, he has a father!

Last night was Parent Teacher Conferences. Bossy and I make dinner for the teachers and serve it which makes it so we don't get home until about 7:00 but that's beside the point. I was sitting with one of the teachers and she reminded me of this story:

She teaches 4th grade and has really large classes which makes her job "fun" but she handles it like a professional. One day she intercepted a note being passed from one boy to another. In it the note read something like: Your dad is a bastard.

She called the passer up to talk to him and told him that he was going to have to call his parents. He called and the teacher stood by listening to the story the kid told. She could hear the dad asking him if he knew what bastard meant, the kid said, no. The dad told him, more like shouted at him, what it meant then asked him something the teacher couldn't hear. Then the kid said, "I think he has a dad."

I bet the kid won't soon forget what bastard means.

Which reminds me of my own upbringing. When I was about 8 or 9 I was confused about the difference between two words that I had heard. When we were visiting my very proper grandmother I got to thinking about those two words and wanted to know "right now" what they meant.

I went into my mom and grandma and said, "Mom? Is a shyster and a bastard the same thing?" My grandma and my mom just sat there looking at me then each other then they started to giggle and finally my mom said, "Pretty much."