wildrose wrote:A friend and I had a funny conversation relating to the word pussy. As most people on this message board know I retired from teaching several years ago and this particular incident happened quite a few years ago. As is often the case it takes a while to calm elementary students down after lunch break. Sometimes it's worse than others. On one occasion there were several upset students and when I asked what the problem was a boy spoke up and said that another student had called him the p-word. In my mind I was trying to figure out if the word was penis or pervert or poop or piss or prick. Since so many students were upset, I decided to have a class discussion on how to deal with disputes on the playground. As a first step I had the boy whisper his p-word in my ear and when he whispered "pussy" I laughed and shared the word with the class. Half the class gasped because they thought pussy was a bad word and half the class giggled since the realized that pussy had more than one meaning. One little girl spoke up and stated that her parents considered pussy to be a bad word. A boy replied that pussy could mean cat or wimp to which the girl replied that the other meaning was nasty. So, I explained the importance of context. Eventually the class agreed after hearing all the situational details that the relevant meaning of pussy in this case was wimp and that although it was not nice to call someone a wimp, that it was not a violation of the rule against not using swear words at school. I finished up the discussion by reminding students that they should not insult other students, but that they should also keep in mind that there is a difference between mean words and words which can be considered to be indecent or obscene.
I would have told the little girl that her parents are retards!