Easy
Hard
Long
Dork (It does not mean “a whale’s penis.” Why did we all think it did?)
Dictionary (In first grade I got teased mercilessly for saying it too slowly)
Pencil (I also got teased mercilessly for saying I loved my Keroppi pencil. This was doubly upsetting to me, because everyone knows Keroppi is in a monogamous relationship with his girlfriend Keroleen!)
Pickle
Nuts
Apples (I remember being offended when someone used the phrase “apples on the table” in a schoolyard rhyme because I thought it meant “she has big boobs!”)
Cupcakes (Camp friends said it meant “boobs.”)
Twinkie (Camp friends said it meant… well, you know.)
Cookies (Everyone said it meant something dirty, but no one could agree on what it was.)
Banana
Monkey (Perhaps it was the association with bananas?)
Jerk
Jack
Screw
Nail
Oral
Aural
Blow (I consider this and the preceding two Bill Clinton’s fault)
Suck (Of course)
Suckman (Honest to goodness surname of a boy in my grade)
Hyman (Another classmate’s unfortunate surname. For years, I could never understand why my brother’s girlfriend would giggle when I said it.)
Ball
Bawl
Jiffy Lube
Wet ’n’ Wild
Herbal Essences (Because of their commercials.)
Absolutely anything ever said in an Herbal Essences commercial
“Ho” (as in “Land, ho!” or “Listen, ho!” It’s said in every Shakespeare play ever. Our class clown Hovik got a lot of mileage out of that in tenth grade English class.)
“Yum” or “Mmm” or any other food-related onomatopoeia
“Oo la la” (I didn’t realize it basically just mean “ugh” or “oy vey” until I had a babysitter who spoke French and said while we were stuck in traffic)
Not actually a word but that “A-OK” symbol you make with your fingers (Someone said it meant “asshole.” Now I guess it means white supremacist? So I guess they weren’t wrong.)
Jump
“Jumpin’, Jumpin’” (No one could ever convince me they were singing “their pockets full grown”)
Pump
Bump
Pounce
Bounce
Get up
Get down
Jiggy (a friend refused to dance to “Gettin’ Jiggy Wit’ It” at the Camp Dance because she said it was “perverted”)
Deep
Deeper
Come
Hit
It
The very word “dirty”

Needless to say, I had to hit the dictionary pretty hard to come up with some synonyms. I like to think it gave me a deeper appreciation of words, but at the time, it drove me nuts.

Stuff I Did This Week: It’s Matilda’s 30th birthday, so I wrote a piece about what I think she’d be doing now for Vanity Fair! (Probably not making a list of words she once thought were dirty.)

Fake BBC Show Title of the Week: Is It Currently Raining?

Words and Phrases I Was Terrified to Use As …

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