Bad word! Bad, bad word!

Greg called from Iowa and we were talking logistics, like when he's heading back, what work he's finishing up, etc. Greg said that Lee told him he was going to run to the bathroom and soon after that he was going to leave. "I wonder if he already left, though," Greg said, "because he's been in the bathroom a long time."

So we chatted and Greg wanted to talk with Ellie. Ellie hates talking on the phone to anyone, but she's slightly better about talking when the phone is on speaker and she doesn't have to put it up to her ear. So I put it on speaker and Greg said hi, I miss you, how was your day while Ellie grunted and gave a few monosyllabic answers. We gave up in about two minutes and then Greg and I chatted some more.

Then Greg said to me and also to Ellie because he was still on speaker phone, "Well, either a muskrat died inside his ass or he left." And I paused for a minute and said, "You're still on speaker phone." And he said, "oh."

And then I lost my mind and laughed hysterically for about five minutes while Ellie watched me in bewilderment because she didn't even hear what he said. After Greg and I said goodbye, Ellie was desperate to know what he said and wouldn't let me off the hook. I didn't want to be crude, but I also didn't want to lie, so I said, "Well, daddy said a bad word. I don't know if you know it. It's ass. Don't say it. It's a bad word. But that's what he said."

"Yeah, I know that word. Someone wrote it on the bathroom wall at school," she said.

"You're kidding!" I said. "That's terrible!"

"I told the teacher. They wrote the word asshole," Ellie said. "They wrote a-s-s-h-o-l-l."

"It's spelled h-o-l-e," I said.