It's amazing what you can overhear as you wait for your product to arrive for the clientele of Argos is a bizarre mix of every social strata known to mankind. I bet even Prince Wills pops in every now and then to take advantage of their AA battery multipacks.
So I am waiting. Trying to look like I don't shop here very often at all. And I hear a youthful voice piercing the "rhubarb-rhubarb" of the shop's natural ambience.
"Va-gi-nah!"
I raise an eyebrow and half turn.
"Va-gi-NAH!"
There is a boy who looks like the fruit of Fagin's loins sitting on one of the chairs. He can be no more than 10 or 11 but plainly has the vocabulary of a teenage barrow-boy. Hearing an impatient sigh to my right I deduce that his mother (25 going on 47) is stood next to me at Collection Point B.
"Va-GI-NAH!"
The call comes again and I briefly wonder whether the boy is merely pointing out an Empress's new clothes (but can see no evidence of public nudity) or is insulting a mortal enemy after swearing off four letter words.
His mother, turns and utters his name like it is itself an expletive.
"Kevin!"
Kevin clearly hears the warning in his mother's voice and changes tack.
"Pee-nus!"
Oh joy, I think. Sex education at the junior school level is plainly working. Let's talk about sex (baby). Let's talk about all the good thing and the bad things, etc, etc. It is after all what Collection Point A was made for.
The word penis is intoned a few more times, steadily rising in volume, like Master Pottymouth is the high priest of the great god, Nob before his mother finally kicks in with an unspecified threat.
"Kevin, if you don't shut up..."
Kevin shuts up. Though not before positing the argument that, "What? They're just words."
And for all I found his shameless genitalia obsession a little disturbing and worryingly unwholesome I have to concede that he has a point. They are just words. But I wonder what he was trying to communicate with them? What meaning lay behind them in his mind?
A cry for help?
A call for information on this topic, please mater, for it fascinates me deeply?
Or just a sad cry for attention to someone who can't even focus on her son long enough to formulate a decent cause and effect response to his inappropriate behaviour?
Who knows. My goods had arrived by that point and, it being Argos, I figured it was all bollocks anyway.
13 comments:
Being Argus I'd assumed that he was calling for the goods he had ordered....
A fantastic tale told in your normal eloquent style. Tourette syndrome perhaps? Surprising that he didn't go into variations on genitalia - pussy, fanny, willy, knob, dick, - what am I doing??? It's catching.... arrghh. Attention please, attention.
I'm impressed:he didn't use the vulgar terms for genitalia.
Now if it had been Poundland...
"What? They're just words." He really said that? The kid is a budding smartarse. There should be talent scouts signing up tykes like that for future You Tube video monologues.
P.S. What he was trying to achieve was the embarrassment of his mother. I wish someone had asked him if he had one when he uttered the V-word.
If vagina and penis were all he said I think we can safely say he was one of the better brought up children that frequent Argos. I hate it in there. It seriously attracts life's dregs (and being as I go there I can only assume I am one too). I wouldn't raise an eyebrow at cock and cunt being happily called between two toddlers to be quite frank. Oh yes and a happy christmas to you good sir!
Well Kevin is right about them being just words. But we all know he was using their shock value.
Can you see him shouting "Custard" or "Trouser" instead?
Oh dear! I am sorry you had to witness that. I think that boy may very well have been at the crack sticks...a product Findus makes which produces strange reactions in some kids.
The fly in the web: let's hope they don't come in blister packs.
Tenon_Saw: plainly his mother is failing him in terms of a wider education. Still, I'm sure the playground committee will set him right.
Marginalia: you think I'd be seen dead in Poundland without a stab-vest?
Gorilla Bananas: I didn't like to talk to him. His mother looked like Geoff Capes in lipstick.
Kelloggsville: such profanity in one so young! Yes, you, madam! Tch! And a very merry Christmas to you too!
Martin: I fear he would have merely combined the two concepts and taken great joy in shouting "trouser-custard" as lasciviously as he could.
Emma: to be honest, he looked more like a crack-pipe kinda dude.
Nothing a good shock collar wouldn't fix.
I remember sitting on the top deck of a bus and asking the then three-year old Boy what he was (I wish I could remember the context)...to be greeted by "I'm a bugger" Which he continued to say for the rest of the 45 minute journey. But may be at 10, it wouldn't have been said with the same joyful innocence...
English Rider: I bet Argos sell tasers.
Nota Bene: I hear the voice of his weary parents in that 3 year old...
I would have said in a loud voice
"actually Kevin the term is FRONT BOTTOM......
John: wash your mouth out with soap!
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