The Swart

Our son walked in the front door, red cheeked and grinning, after soccer practice.  His blue gym bag was slung over his shoulder, and he still wore his shin guards and cleats.

“Hey Mom, you know those fart cards your friend gave you?”

My local writing buddy, after reading my Lost Balls post, and about our family’s love of cards, gifted me with a deck of “Fifty Farts” cards at our last critique session.  The cards have provided endless entertainment in our highly mature household, including an evening where the kids’ dad and I thought it would be funny to explain to them what a shart was.  Which, of course, meant that we had to say the word “shit” to them.  And explain what that was.

When we told the kids, “Shit is poop,” a lightbulb went off over our son’s head and he said, “Ohhhh, so that’s what it means.”

I asked, “Where have you heard the word before if you don’t know what it means?”

He shrugged.  “Kids talk about bad words at the lunch table, but nobody knows what any of them mean.”

Great.  Nobody’s going to let their kids to come to our house anymore.

I dried my hands after washing the dishes and smiled at my son’s flushed, grinning face. “Yeah, I know the cards.”

“Do you think they have ‘swart’ in them?” and his grin widened.

My mind raced, trying to figure out what a swart might be.  My husband, who is on our son’s wavelength, said “Is that a sweaty fart?”

“Yeah,” Owen said, and nodded his head, his eyes crinkling with glee above his toothy smile.

“Uggh!! Gross!”  I said.  And laughed.  I looked at his flowy soccer shorts and imagined them fluttering with his swart as he ran up the sidewalk to our house.

“A swart makes a funny sound,” our son said.  “Like rapid machine gun fire,” and he grinned again, turned around, and climbed upstairs to change.

We may have a creative writer on our hands.

Fifty Farts card deck by Knock Knock