"I think it was from a song by Doja Cat." Josh's respite care provider hesitatingly let me know that their weekly trip to Trader Joe's did not go as smoothly as it usually did this week. Apparently, they had to wait outside for a while because Josh was repeatedly singing a phrase from a song which had a bad word in it, a word which he should not be singing indoors while grocery shopping on a busy Sunday afternoon.
"Oh no!" I said to her. "Was it the F-word?"
I had heard Josh saying something that sounded like the F-word the other day. You can't always tell because he pronounces certain words in odd ways. For example, one of his favorite words to say is 'vacuum'. Unfortunately, it usually sounds like 'f***-um'. So it can be tricky, you know?
"No, it was worse. It was the N-word."
My hands flew up to my face in distress. "What?! How does he know that word?"
Ariana, Josh's caregiver, is a young twenty something who listens to a wide range of music. Apparently she was familiar with the very song from which Josh was quoting or singing given the phrase which apparently was stuck in my sweet son's head.
"Why is this person saying the N-word in a song?!" I demanded, more than annoyed that such influence had reached my innocent boy.
"Mom." My 16 year old daughter had come out of her room to see what the commotion was all about. "She's black. She gets to use the word. And she's a rapper."
I could tell from her tone that my daughter kinda couldn't believe that I didn't know who Doja Cat was. (And I know who she is . . . I just didn't know that she was black or a rapper or, okay, really anything about her but I have heard that name before.)
But Hope was sympathetic to our conundrum. How do we help a kid like Josh to understand that there are things that you can't say out loud, even if you are happy, even if you are singing, and even if someone else says it, even if it's stuck in your head?
The thing is, Josh has no idea what a "bad word" is. He doesn't swear or curse or use profane words or images to express that he's angry or cool or sexy. He does not use words or sarcasm or gossip to hurt people. He does not know how to objectify his own or other people's bodies. He has no idea that the simple use of certain words said by certain people at certain times reminds the hearers about how language was one of the tools which were used to horrifically oppress an entire group of people in the history of this country and has echos even now.
He just picks up sounds and phrases and repeats them because they sound good to him. He's just as likely to repeat a phrase from Elmo or the Wiggles as Doja Cat or Kanye/Ye.
As sad as this is, today this reality brings me comfort because Josh's intellectual disability protects him from a having his heart be influenced by the profanity and the negative influence of certain words and phrases in the world around him. He is not going to learn to think about precious things like sex, our bodies, God, our promises flippantly. He doesn't know how to say one thing but mean or do another. He doesn't use words as a weapon. In this way, Josh is freer than some of the other teens that I know and love.
Now if I can only figure out how to keep him from using the N-word at Trader Joes.
