How I Learned the "P" Word

I was four years old when the movie House Party was released. I don't remember it coming out in theaters and that's because it was not a kid's movie and my parents were not in to movies like that. At the time, I was an only child and my mom was just about to pop out my little sister. Both of my parents worked a lot and they needed someone they trusted to watch me. My dad had a really good friend named Babatunde, we called him Uncle Bubba. Uncle Bubba, like many American black men of his generation, had decided to reclaim their African names and live a more Afrocentric lifestyle. He had four daughters all who had traditional African names too. They were much older than me and of course, they were recruited to babysit me.  As a kid, I was extremely shy and did not like staying with most people. However, I always liked it when Uncle Bubba's girls babysat me. They lived in an apartment and had a huge dog named Pup Pup; and even though I was terrified of him, I still did not mind going over to their place because they were always so nice to me. Especially the second daughter Tiombe, or TeeTee for short. TeeTee was awesome and was like a big sister rather than a babysitter. She was the older girl I wanted to be and was the image of black teenagers of the eighties and nineties. She wore African kente cloth hats and Africa medallion necklaces. She wore colorful baggy jeans with big t-shirts that had "African" or "Queen" screen printed on the front. She was "ALL THAT" and then some.
She looked and dressed like early 90's Queen Latifah . I loved TeeTee and her style. Plus she was super duper nice. She became my main babysitter. One time she was making breakfast and asked if I wanted my egg sunny side up. I didn't know what the heck that meant and it sounded nice, so I said yes. When she put the eggs in front of me, I looked at them with disgust. They weren't done. Without me having to say anything she realized that that was not what I wanted and quickly fried me up some new eggs. One day- I had to be about five- I was playing with one of those plastic toy cash registers and sitting in front of the TV. TeeTee was on the couch watching a movie. I didn't know what the movie was, but the part I started paying attention to was the part they used the "P" word...a lot. I liked the word and started using it in my game with my cash register "Here you go ma'am, one "p***y", "For you sir, your change will be three "p***y" "Oh these apples are one dollar and twenty-five p***y". TeeTee jumped off the couch and looked me dead in the eyeballs and said in a very sweet, yet stern voice: "Chanty! Do not use that word! Don't say that word! It's a very bad word!" And I never said it out loud again. But I never forgot it. It was only later that I would find out that she was watching House Party. She didn't stop watching it while she babysat me...she loved that movie and I did too. As I got older I watched the movie more and more even as a kid, I wanted to be Sharane so bad! Mainly because I thought Play was just so cute. TeeTeee stopped babysitting me when I turned seven or eight and our families lost touch, only meeting one time, when her big sister DeeDee had a baby.

About five years ago I went with my Dad to catch up with TeeTee after he ran into her at the grocery store. And she still remembered scolding me for saying the "P" word. We laughed about it and she said she was so scared that I'd say it when my parents got home and they would know I got it from something she was watching. She was still TeeTee and as sweet and jovial as she had been when she was my babysitter all those years ago. She has her own kids now and she is a super mom!

When I started babysitting, I always remembered how TeeTee treated me. I was not just the kid she babysat, I was her baby. Shoutout to all the great babysitters who unintentionally exposed us to bad words!