(Creation above courtesy of DJG Design.)

Last night I taught two children the meaning of the word “turd.”  This golden (i.e. brown) opportunity arose when the wife and I were babysitting two kids from church.  We were watching the beloved ’80s film Goonies with Emily and Trevor, who are 10 and 6, respectively. At one point, one of the characters calls another character a turd.  Upon hearing this foreign word, Emily turned to me and said, “What does ‘turd’ mean, Chad?”  I was born to answer this question. I have a Ph.D. in Scatology, after all.

I still remember when I was a child and Dad taught me the meaning of this word.  He was changing my little sister Alyssa’s diaper, and it probably contained a dastardly doozy of a doody. “You’re a little turd, aren’t you?”  He said in reference to Alyssa.  Like Emily, I had an inquiring mind.

“What does ‘turd’ mean, Dad?”  I asked.  He explained it was another word for poop, doody, etc.  I was thrilled that such a word existed. It really seemed to capture the essence of feces in a way that “poop” and other slang words did not. That being the case, when I first heard someone refer to turds in more profane ways, it sounded all wrong to me. One word in particular rhymed with “hit,” sounding percussive to the ear.  Unless one is talking about explosive diarrhea, poop is generally not terribly percussive. “Turd” felt right, sounded right, rolled off of the tongue and right into the toilet just like any fecal descriptor should. After learning the word from my Dad, I walked around the house for the next 13 years or so, mindlessly chanting it, much to my mother’s dismay.

Keeping that in mind, I will return to little Emily, who asked me “What does ‘turd’ mean?” Her brother Trevor choed her inquiry: “Yeah, what does ‘turd’ mean, Chad?”  I explained it was another word for poop, and I told them how I learned the word from my Dad.  It had been a rite of passage for me, and now it was a rite of passage for them.

“Turd?”  He asked, giggling.  Yes, Trevor.  Turd.  Becki and I both laughed equally uncontrollably.  Trevor repeated the word as if he were trying on a new pair of sneakers to determine whether they fit or not. Before long, Emily and Trevor were using the word in sentences.

“I made a turd today, Chad,” Trevor said. Emily mostly just giggled, pretending to be embarrassed when she was obviously amused by the whole thing.

We finished the movie, and I was grateful they did not ask about other words in the movie that somehow slipped under the PG-rating radar. They never asked about about “One-Eyed Willie,” the name of the pirate whose treasure the Goonies were searching for, and also a popular slang term for a certain male part. Upon hearing a character utter his name, Becki and I looked at each other immediately in astonishment. We had never noticed it before. We suddenly had an inkling what it might be like to be parents – what it might be like to serve as cultural gatekeepers for our own children in the future, preventing them from stumbling upon things that might compromise their innocence.

When their parents Anne and Kelly came to pick them up, I told them Emily and Trevor had learned a new word. They were amused, thankfully. Anne immediately corrected Emily when she said, “I was turding.”

“It’s a noun, not a verb,” she explained. Around this time, Trevor began unleashing a flurry of turds, at least verbally.

“I’m a turd! Chad’s a turd! I made a turd!” It was like looking in the mirror and seeing a midget with blonde hair mimicking my every move.