Idiot -5minutefreewrite

For https://steemit.com/freewrite/@mariannewest/day-369-5-minute-freewrite-wednesday-prompt-idiot

Idiot!
Schmidiot!

This is a naughty word. It really is. I know this. Well, I don't know if I would have known this otherwise, but I'm especially certain of this because when I read to kids, they gasp if "idiot" or "stupid" occurs in the book, no matter what the context, really. Fascinating. And they aren't necessarily upset with the character that said it. They're shocked that I said it. Like, if any other naughty word were in a book, it would take you out of the story, and make you go, "I can't believe I was read a book with that word in it." Which is what I find noteworthy about this whole situation.

I think, of course, that to call someone or even something "stupid" or "idiot" is rude and not useful, of course. But I'm not surprised that characters do it. They lash out, and I don't think of the words themselves as carrying that kind of emotional weight that other no-no words do. Like, the word itself I think of as just rudely descriptive. Not an epithet. That's what I was looking for. I don't think of them as epithets.

But kids have learned those words as epithets. Maybe it's no different, really, from how I expect them to learn those words. A parent hears a child calling someone "stupid" and says, "we don't say that about people", and the kid, instead of learning why it's rude, just learns that it's forbidden (like the f-word, and so on)

Time. But you see where I'm going. You can finish this train of thought for me.