New Breed

Last night Katie emailed some puppy photos and we got on another jag of phone calls and email through crazy laughter. I'm not going to repeat the things we said because most of it was highly inappropriate.

Let me just say that if ever I bring home a Jack Russell/Shih Tzu mix puppy, its name will be Don't Know.

Seriously, you could damage internal organs laughing like that.

* * *
Four or five years ago, several colleagues and I were talking about the word bitch, and the way its use and acceptance has changed, especially among younger generations. Time was, we opined, when people were offended by its use but now had become sadly numb to it.

"Heck," said one younger colleague, "I call my husband a bitch all the time. He doesn't mind. Like, I walk in the house at night and say, 'Hey. Where's my dinner, bitch?'"

We older ones gasped collectively. "Does he get mad?"

"Nah. He just says, 'At the drive-thru where you left it, bitch.'"

Her flat delivery and off-hand manner struck us all as hilarious. We laughed to tears and good-naturedly (and quietly) called one another bitches throughout the rest of the day.

I believe Katie called during one of the fits of laughter surrounding this. I'd like to think so, anyway. But for whatever reason—perhaps just plain-old-fashioned inappropriateness—I told her the story that night at dinner. For days we hardly uttered a sentence to one another that did not end in the word bitch. We laughed like maniacs at every "clever" new use we came up with.

Part of it was the shock value. She was 17 or so and although I'm sure she said a lot of things with friends, she had never sworn in front of me (still doesn't), nor I in front of her. But once we got started, we couldn't stop, and it set us off every single time. Still does.

Once or twice during tense moments surrounding Katie's search for and reunion with her birth mother, times of over-the-top drama or great fear for one of us, the other has broken the moment with, "Hey. Where's my dinner, bitch?"

Gets us every time.