We have a foul-mouthed generation

On Monday evening, I was cooling my heels in the living room after a donkey’s day at work.

Little Tiffany was seated with me, looking adorable as she calmly watched her favourite cartoon on TV.

At some point in the show, a commercial wormed its way into the screen, effectively putting an end to the little one’s fun.

“Shindwe!” she screeched, while flailing her arms. As if one commercial was not enough, the commercial gave way to a news update, which was followed by a string of more commercials.

Now this was too much for the little one to handle, and she almost took a trip to the moon.

“Shindwe pepo mbaya!” she cursed at the TV, before grabbing her dolls and stomping out of the room.

“Who taught her these things?” I enquired of Mama Jimmy, feeling royally disappointed.

As you know, Tiff is still in kindergarten, but she looked neither “cute” nor “adorable” after spewing such god-awful words.

“Ah, she must have learned it from Maggy,” Mama Jimmy whispered, referring to the mboch.

Indeed, Maggy has lately become the high priestess of crude communication in my hacienda. For her, even the smallest of mishaps provides the perfect opportunity to mouth a cringe-worthy expletive.

She screams out profanities whenever milk spills on the stove or whenever her phone’s airtime runs out while she is still having a conversation.

I wish I could say my miseries ended with Tiffany’s tantrum but lo! Just then, a call came through for Miss Mboch, who was in the kitchen preparing supper.

Before long, she embarked on a verbal sparring match with the caller, using a language that could easily drive your former Sunday school teacher into a coma.

I later gathered the person on the other end of the line is her boyfriend.

I wanted to storm that kitchen and ask her to shut up, but Mama Jimmy restrained me.

“Maggy is angry, Baba Jim. In any case, she is a grown woman, and that is her private conversation,” she said. I disagreed.

Granted, we live in a free society where people can freely speak their minds, but there are limits to what one can say in public, especially in the presence of children. I was still reeling in shock when more drama erupted in the house, this time involving the lads.

Jimmy picked a fight with his younger brother, whom he accused of sitting at the wrong place and obstructing his view of the TV.

“Wewe toa kichwa mbele ya TV,” he roared at Russell who did not comply.

The lads then went ballistic on each other, making liberal use of a certain four-letter word that has become the gold standard among profanities in this town.

Apparently, there is something wickedly refreshing about letting that four-letter word rip out of your mouth whenever you are mad at something.

“Can’t you sit elsewhere?” Russell sneered. At this, Jimmy told him to quit being a jerk, to which Russell responded by calling Jimmy an idiot.

He then thrust his clenched fist in the air and gestured at Jimmy, and close scrutiny revealed that he did not bother to clench the middle finger on the material fist.

Now this threw me into a rage. Believe me, the sight of your teenage sons flashing middle finger salutes can easily make you give them up for adoption.

“Let that be the last time you hold such a conversation,” I hissed, and they immediately fell silent.

So there you have it, ladies and gentlemen. Raising children in this this age has become a rocky adventure.

Pop music and the Internet have violated my boys’ innocence to a point where obscenities have become the salt and Royco Mchuzi Mix of their conversations.

Little Tiffany has been taking swearing lessons from our mboch, who seems to believe that pepo mbaya is behind every minor accident in the kitchen.

It is time to fumigate the language in this house.