Róisín Ingle . . . on ‘Mary’ and other euphemisms

I went to a dinner party. People seem to be having them again. Not once did anybody mention property, so that was a relief.

The conversation did include the Big Two you are not supposed to talk about in polite company: 1. Politics (we covered voting in the general election, the increase in female candidates and that red line election issue – for some of us anyway – abortion); and 2. Religion (communions, Educate Together schools, Archbishop McQuaid) and while there was some disagreement about all of the above nobody came to actual blows across the naan bread.

It was a curry night, you see. Beef, since you’re asking. The spice factor was billed as “medium to hot” but a little bowl of what the host called “an accelerator” was passed around the table for those with hardier palates. This bowl was full of the chillies known as The Devil’s Penis.

And I can’t be sure but I think that’s probably how we got on to the subject of what all of us around the table told our children to call their “private” “parts”.

For all my lofty, liberal, feminist intentions, I’ve been guilty of “front bottoming” the situation with our daughters. If you’d asked me seven years ago when I was pregnant, I would have been certain I was going to be a “tell it like it is” like any self-respecting parent who wants her daughters to know the difference between her vagina and her vulva.

I planned to equip them with the proper anatomical names as soon as they showed any interest and I imagined myself having no regard for the inevitable embarrassing consequences for either them or for me at the school gate. But now when it does arise, I seem to lose my bottle.

I am not proud of this but it’s “bottom” for everything that is “down there” and “front bottom” if really necessary and when from the back seat of the car, plaintive questions arise such as “but how did we get IN your tummy, Mummy?”

I turn the radio up louder and talk in this high-pitched voice I don’t recognise about seeds being planted in the garden. This bit of parenting has snuck up on me. I am not quite prepared.

Certain other people at the dinner party had no such qualms. My friend had decided early on what she was going to do and had followed through on her plan.

“I know I should probably tell them the proper word, but I’ve always said it’s their Mary and so that’s what they call it,” she announced happily while passing around the Devil’s Penises. Penisi? (Who knows? Not this anatomical refusenik anyway) The announcement about “Mary” prompted full-on-stop-it-I-can’t-breathe laughter from some of us around the table. It got worse when my friend told us about the latest chat from her eldest daughter after swimming class: “Swimming is easy,” she said. “I just kick my right leg around to my Mary and my left leg around to my Mary”

I’ve since been researching this tricky issue on parenting chat forums. People have all sorts of names for It. Like (and I am not making any of these up) : flower, frou frou, noodle, ding ding, twinkle, fairy, sprinkle, dinky, winky and mini.

Front bottom is hugely popular and there are a fair few people who opt for the proper name while always using nicknames as a fallback.

The name-calling habit did all get a bit much, though ,with one woman, a midwife, saying it should be real names all the way; she had witnessed through her career too many grown women about to give birth who were unable to say the word vagina.

If you are like me and wondering about the best non-Mary approach, Miss Manner's Guide to Rearing Perfect Children is a useful source. The author, Judith Martin, writes that of course you should teach children the correct names but that euphemisms and nicknames are just as important: "Giving them one without the other is unfair."

A small child can understand that there are times when euphemisms serve a purpose. As she puts it: “The person who grows up saying, ‘I’m going to have a bowel movement now,’ is not going to have much of a social life.” Which is sensible advice when you think about it.

After the curry dinner my “Mary” friend texted to say she’d been asking around and discovered at least one of her childhood friends also grew up calling her “front bottom” her “Mary”.

“Her mother always said before she went to school, ‘go to the bathroom and wash your face, your hands and your Mary”.

Anyway, as you can imagine, the whole saga made it extremely difficult for me to keep a straight face when I had Newry band The Four of Us in to the podcast studio recently to sing their wonderful hit song which naturally I can never listen to in the same way again.

Oh, Mary.