“Excuse you?” Mother walks into the kitchen. “Dammit Jimbo, you gotta stop this! You’re going to be eight years old this week—when are you going to start acting your age? And where did you learn that language?”

She soaks up the spilled beer with an old dishrag and tosses it on the table while she bends down to pick up the shards of broken glass.

The dishrag is close. He stuffs it in his mouth. “Pfwockit,” he mumbles, and extracts every last drop from the filthy cloth.