I ignored it. Raybourne’s a fabulous author and I did SO want to find out if Nicholas Brisbane would kiss Lady Julia Gray again, so far the extent of their physical engagement.

More muttering to my right, but now the words began to penetrate my consciousness.

What you say? Flying balls and stiff shafts?

There’s not a romance writer in the world who will fail to identify with my curiosity at the tenor of those words – flying balls and stiff shafts? What other meaning could be attached to them but a bit of naughtiness?

“What are you talking about?” I asked, dragging my eyes from the printed form of Nicholas Brisbane.

Dr. Big waved a giant golf magazine in front of me. “My golf game, what else? A golfer’s most important tools are flying balls – gotta get loft and trajectory, but not too much or the ball will . . .”

At this point my eyes glazed over. “Hmmm,” I murmured noncommitally. I gave up Nicholas Brisbane for THIS?

Ha!

What did I THINK he meant?

The conversation got me to thinking. Would the mind of a normal person (by that, insert – a non-romance writer) flit precisely to the same place as mine did?

That idea led to euphemisms and YES, that’s my topic. We writers talk about purple prose and unrealistic and ridiculous stand-ins for body parts and functions, but what do we really mean? Should we call a spade a spade – er, a shaft a shaft?

Before I was a mother, my delightful nephew Bryan had an accident in which his tiny penis had a serious confrontation with the toilet seat. Said toilet seat assaulted the poor boy and, honestly, it’s a wonder the kid ever got potty-trained. Three-year-old Bryan raced screaming into the living room where his mother and I were talking. “I hurt my wee-wee tickler,” he bawled.

Wee-wee tickler? Good grief, was my sister actually going to let her child call his penis a wee-wee tickler?

But I now realize there’s a place for such ridiculous euphemisms. The first time I used the word “penis” in front of my father-in-law, he had an apoplectic fit and stomped out of the room, muttering something about bad language. Hmm, I’d rather thought the word was simply . . . anatomically correct.

The other day my five-year-old granddaughter flashed me a sad little look. “Grammy Jo,” she said, “my vagina hurts.”

“Oh, really?” I tried very hard not to laugh.

She nodded theatrically. “I didn’t wipe the right way,” she confided. “Now I have an infection.”

Her younger brother has his own troubled story to tell. At the tender age of three, he raided his father’s nightstand drawer looking for the candy stash. Apparently the little blue pill looks like . . . candy.

Fighting the euphemism battle is a difficult task for parents. Even when we use the medical terminology for body parts and functions, children are like dirty little sponges. They soak up whatever “potty” word is going around at the moment.

It is an uphill and, I suspect, losing battle.

Wee-wee tickler is beginning to sound better all the time.

What about you? Do you shudder when a romance writer uses a silly, demeaning term for a body part or function? Any funny experiences with your own children? Are you sick of that purple prose or do you prefer the euphemism to the harsh glare of reality?