Bad words

Meatballs (the movie) caused me to explain slurs to my kids the other day. Looking for a less-than-awful example, I stumbled on this lost memory:
As noted else-blog, I lived in Holland for a stretch while growing up. There I was, getting taller, all surrounded by Dutch stuff.
The American and Dutch kids went (mostly) to different schools, but we lived next door to each other, listening to our older brothers’ copies of “Sheer Heart Attack” by Queen.
Sometimes we played together. For those times when we fought, we created our own slurs. “Dutchies!” we’d call the Dutch kids. Which sounds to me now like a matched-set of collectable mob bosses. Or were we really just saying “Dutch cheese”? That would be an odd thing to call someone, even in anger.
“Cray-shee Amerikahnsies!” they’d call us. And OK — that was fair. We were crazy. Crazy about rock n roll!
Even as we launched our half-hearted catapaults, we couldn’t take it too seriously. How angry could you be listening to a band whose lead guitarist had hair what looked like this?
brian_may_23.jpg
Brian May kept the peace.

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4 comments for “Bad words

  1. Bluebeard
    November 14, 2008 at 9:42 pm

    First?!
    Btw, is a half-hearted catapault worse or better than a full-hearted catapault?

  2. November 15, 2008 at 5:46 pm

    I think that’s the first “first” in the history of cecilvortex.com! A duck just dropped from the ceiling….
    -Cecil

  3. Itto Ogami
    December 2, 2008 at 7:40 am

    queen’s ‘news of the world’ was the first album i ever bought (i’m not counting the soundtrack to grease, although in all honesty i loved that album. but, i was young. young, and face it, olivia newton john in black leather was quite a sight for a 12 year old.)
    back to queen. ‘news’ rocked. we really were the champions.

  4. heroic imp
    December 10, 2008 at 9:59 pm

    I just came upon this, like a big wheel being different than a ding dong, different texture, Brian may had teh texture, Boston never had, the band that is…makes me wonder why Judas Priest couldn;t keep the peace, or why Duran Duran would start a fire (I know it was teh other guy)…oh well, we continue on waving the flag that Gordan Gano would later give us all

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