Some of them are too polite to do more than perk and eyebrow in our general direction while others cast long warning glares that we’re meant to see. Either way, the message is clear: they’re watching.  One would think that this atmosphere of distrust between parents and young daycare workers would cause most rational mothers to hire the nice elderly woman down the road to watch their rugrats, but everyday they come back. Everyday they shoot those warning glances that say “you’re a little young for this job” or “I heard that obnoxious stereo of yours in the parking lot again.”

            For the handful of twenty-somethings that work with me at the daycare, every hint at distrust or unease is a small victory. Every glower we receive carries the underlying message that we’re not matronly enough to care for small children on a regular basis. Of course, that’s not the image any of us want. The young girls who have taken up the task of rearing and teaching children often display their vices like merit badges the moment we’re off the clock and away from the kids. Whether it’s the pre-school teacher who chain smokes cigarettes, the toddler teacher who proudly shows us her new tattoos, or myself gleefully cursing the moment I hit the door, it’s all the same. We’ll fight this image of maturity and responsibility tooth and nail. We may be soft-spoken authority figures in the confines of the daycare center, but once we’re out of our classrooms, we’re still hip and young…right?

            We put up with the charade and censor ourselves day in and day out so not to corrupt the children. These children, who are so still wide-eyed and sheltered, must have their innocence and sense of wonder preserved at all costs. That unspoken rule is universally agreed upon, even by reluctant caretakers such as ourselves. We know we’re a profane lot, and the children must never know who we really are, lest we somehow rub off on them. The last thing any of us wants is for one of these precious youngsters to take up our nasty personality traits.

            With this mentality I return to work day after day with my false persona, all good manners and kind words. On one particular day, I felt it necessary to reward my classroom for sitting through a mandatory lesson on Europe that would have caused me, at age seven, to throw my hands in the air and flail in boredom. As I don’t care to spend the few dollars I earn at the center on tooth-rotting candy or flimsy prizes, I reward my children with what I would have most enjoyed at their age: ten minute dance parties in the classroom. I selected a normally loud, abrasive child who had shown extreme restraint that day to pick the music for our dance party.

            After he had flipped through the CD assortment I had so kindly brought to the center three times, Xavier gave an exasperated sigh. He pretended to look at them once more for dramatic effect before giving me his best doe eyes.

            “Miss…a lot of your CDs are…um…old,” Xavier snickered. In all fairness, he’s right. I had a tendency to bring in music that I wanted to listen to, and I could hardly expect a seven year old to get excited about dancing to Otis Redding or the Ramones.

            “Okay, so what do you say we do instead?”

            Xavier mulls this over for a second. I’m sure he’s wondering just what he can talk his way into. Finally, he asks, “Can I hook my ipod up to the stereo?”

            I don’t see any problem with this, so I give him my consent on the condition that I approve his choice of songs prior to blaring whatever it is the kids are listening to these days for all to hear. He returns a minute later and proudly shows me the song he wants to hear. It seems innocuous enough. It’s a song I’ve heard on the radio so many times I’ve occasionally fantasized about ripping out the artist’s vocal chords. Still, it’s a song that’s hugely popular with the young crowd, and it has a dance they all seem to know.

            When I give a half-hearted nod of approval, Xavier squeals and bounces off to wire his new-fangled music player to the center’s antique radio. Within seconds, a familiar synthesized beat fills the room. The 18 children in attendance run to the center of the room and begin a gyrating motion that vaguely resembles some hyperactive cousin of country line dancing. When the artist’s nasal shriek begins, so do the children. They bounce from side-to-side, shrieking every word along with the song.

            When the song’s chorus begins booms through the speakers, roughly half of the room stops singing, or at least quiets enough to indicate there’s something not quite right going on. Xavier turns to the other students and hisses something that sounds like “be quiet!” He turns around and makes direct eye contact. Uh-oh. As anyone who’s ever worked with children can tell you, direct eye contact is often a clear indicator of guilt.

            I’m confused. I hadn’t heard any curse words, and I’m fairly confident I’m well acquainted with them all by now. I think of the odd line that had caused the conspiratorial smirks and hushes. It’s a line I’ve never understood, but had always assumed was in place for the purpose of rhyming, without needing to make any particular sense. Now I’m curious. Was there something I didn’t know? When the dance party winds down, I call Xavier to my desk in the hopes that he can clear up the confusion for me.

            “Xavier,” I smirk, “what was that all about?”

            He puts on his best confused face. “What was what all about, Miss?”

            “Why were you shushing everyone? Is there something I should know?”

            He shifts from side to side, and it’s a sure sign that there is, in fact, something I should know.

            “Well, you know. I thought we were going to get in trouble.”

            “For?” I prod. I’m really curious now. Clearly, I had missed some euphemism. I’m thinking it’s got to be something akin to Bob Dylan’s Tambourine Man for the under ten set.

            “You know what that line means.”

            I narrow my eyes. He’s cleverer than I’d bargained for. I’m now faced with the unpleasant task of admitting to being hopelessly ignorant of hip-hop slang. This is definitely not something a hip young teacher should be out of the loop on.

            “Okay, fine. I don’t know what it means. What is it?”

            He fidgets and looks away. When I don’t say anything else to fill the silence, he asks whether he’ll be in trouble for telling me. I know it’s some grand dirty joke the kids are all in on these days, so I slide him a piece of paper.

            “Just write it down. I want to know what you’re listening to.”

            He scrawls furiously across the paper as his cheeks flush a deep maroon color. Alright, maybe it’s not a Tambourine Man style reference to some sort of contraband. Maybe it’s some new way of slipping a dirty word onto the radio. I remember these things; it wasn’t so long ago that I was a kid giggling at the naughty things slipped past the censors.

            He finally finishes writing. He shoves the paper into my hands and mumbles something or other about not telling his mom as he slinks off to his seat. I can barely wait to see what’s in the paper, but I don’t want the little guy to suffer any further embarrassment in front of his peers. I’ll wait until the end of the day.

            When the last child is ushered away by a parent giving me the customary polite greeting with a scowl at my ripped jeans, I reach in my pocket and pull out the crumpled piece of paper. What’s the worst it could be? I unfold it and read it once. And again. With mounting horror, I read a translation of the seemingly nonsensical lyric a third time. As my mind processes the fact that a roomful of small children is aware of this euphemism for an act that I’m fairly confident is illegal in several states, I wish my mom were around to give the evil eye to my students for corrupting me. After all, if it weren’t for these profane little children, I’d be mercifully none the wiser on this particular subject.

            When the parents come in to pick up or drop of their spawn, I occasionally give them a perk of the eyebrow, or even an unabashed warning glare. A glare that says “do you know what your kids are talking about?” or “I’ve never heard filth quite so filthy as what your daughter shouted at another girl in the classroom today.” One would think the disturbing and vile things I hear on a daily basis would case a rational woman in her early twenties to go work at the nice restaurant down the street, but every day I go back to resume the charade.