At school, one of the things I sometimes to do is help certain kids read the novel they are working on.  Right now, that novel is Bridge to Terabithia.  Today, I read with 3 girls, and we read a chapter that had BAD WORDS in it.  I was the one that actually read the section that had BAD WORDS, but then when they are done, they have to summarize the chapter in their journals…

Not a one of them was willing to write the word hell in their journal.  I tried to convince them that in the context of the book, hell wasn’t a bad word — the book was talking about hell in contrast with heaven (and whether or not the 10 year old girl that had just died was going to go to hell…), but none of them would budge.

We eventually decided that they could say something bout how Jess and his Dad were talking about what God was going to do with Leslie, and that seemed acceptable.  Though, I don’t think any of them remembered to capitalize God until I reminded them.

Now, the use of damn in that passage: I could agree with them that “technically” that was a bad word, but we didn’t even discuss that one.  I thought it was actually pretty cute that they were so worried about potentially getting in trouble for just WRITING something that could be considered a bad word.

I think everyone would agree that the reason I was using BAD WORDS last night was an acceptable usage:  my Bernina is sick.  The needle positioner is not working properly (it sounds…wrong…) and it won’t zig-zag (or anything else that requires the needle to move back and forth) anymore.

Ugh.

Mom’s OLD Bernina doesn’t zigzag anymore either, but THANKFULLY, she still has MY old Bernina, which I grabbed from her house because my main goal for today is to finish zigzagging the edges of the postcards for Saturday.

Who knows when I’m going to have time to get my machine to a dealer.  Or how long it will take to fix.  Or how much it will cost.

I’m thinking many BAD WORDS about it.  But I won’t write them.  I don’t want to get in trouble.