The Bad Word
THE BAD WORD – January 21, 2026 – Sycamore, Illinois, USA
On his way back from recess, second-grader Maxwell Cobb stopped at the drinking fountain. He found it taken apart. The cover was removed and pipes lay beneath it on the floor. The school janitor, Mr. Gary, knelt next to the drinking fountain tightening something with a wrench. As Maxwell approached, Mr. Gary yelled a word in frustration. “BEEP!”
Maxwell had never heard the word before. When he looked in surprise at Mr. Gary, the janitor chuckled like the two of them had just shared a secret.
Of all the grownups around the elementary school, Mr. Gary was easily the coolest. He had a mustache and rode a motorcycle. He wore jeans to work and a jacket with the name Gary stitched into the front. All the kids called him “Mr. Gary” without knowing if Gary was his first or last name.
As Maxwell walked away from the broken water fountain, he thought about the new word yelled by Mr. Gary. His mind rolled the word around like it was fingering a ball of clay. He whispered it to himself. “BEEP. BEEP.” He continued thinking about it when he reached his classroom and watched his teacher, Mrs. Sheraton, explain subtraction with borrowing. She handed out a worksheet and expected the class to practice.
Maxwell stared at the math problems on the paper in front of him. He used his pencil to write numbers and marks. A quarter of the way down the page, he decided he needed a break and the point on his pencil was dull enough to justify a sharpening.
The pencil sharpener in Mrs. Sheraton’s classroom was an old-fashioned mechanical model attached to her desk. Maxwell liked the sound it made as it chewed wood and pencil lead. He walked slowly to the sharpener and began grinding as Mrs. Sheraton looked on.
“I think it’s full,” she said. “You can empty it if you’re careful.”
Maxwell had successfully done the emptying job before, so he confidently twisted off the plastic cover that held the wood shavings. After detaching it, he held it in both hands as he moved toward the waste basket behind Mrs. Sheraton’s desk. As he reached to dump in the shavings, somehow the holder slipped nervously from Maxwell’s hands. Half of the sharpening refuse fell to the floor beside the waste basket.
A flustered Maxwell barked out the word still floating in his head. “BEEP!” He did not say it loud enough for the kids in the class to hear, but Mrs. Sheraton definitely heard it.
“What is that you said?” she asked in alarm.
Maxwell shrugged his shoulders and put on an innocent face. “I heard Mr. Gary say it.”
“It doesn’t sound like a very nice word. You shouldn’t say it.”
Maxwell wanted to ask why not and what the word meant, but the shavings spill and Mrs. Sheraton’s correction left him too embarrassed to ask any questions. He meekly swept up the shavings and accepted that the word was not to be used, at least not around Mrs. Sheraton.
Instead of forgetting about the word and letting it fly away, Maxwell thought about it even more. He practiced saying it under his breath and tried spelling it. By the time he went home from school, the word burrowed itself snuggly into his brain.
As often happened at his house, that night before dinner, his mom and dad cooked together in the kitchen. Maxwell’s curiosity pulled him toward the action and he wondered about the pots and pans on the stove. His mom warned him about not touching them but he did not listen. He put two fingers on a frying pan before pulling them away in shocked pain.
“BEEP!” Maxwell yelled as he clutched his burned fingers with his other hand. When his mom rushed him to the kitchen sink to run cold water over his fingers, he cried and again yelled, “BEEP!”
Both parents helped put lotion on the fingers and wrapped them in a bandage. After Maxwell’s tears dried, his mom asked him about the word he had used.
“Where did you hear that word?”
“At school.”
Maxwell’s mom turned to his dad. “Have you ever heard that word before?”
“No, but it sounds pretty bad. Kids are always making up new obscene words for the shock value. They pop up so fast, you can’t keep track of them.”
Maxwell’s mom turned back to her son. “Did you hear big kids saying that word?”
“No, grownups. Mrs. Sheraton doesn’t like it.”
“She talked about the word?”
“Yes.”
“Well, she must hear all kinds of new words at school. If she thinks it’s bad, you shouldn’t use it. Okay?”
Maxwell nodded his head but it was not the kind of nod that meant he agreed. It was a nod to get his mom to stop talking about the word.
As much as the adults around him wanted him to forget it, the word refused to leave Maxwell’s head. Despite the throbbing pain in his fingers, he continued to wonder about it. How could it have so much power? He used lots of other words that caused no reactions, but when he said this one, people noticed right away.
Maxwell knew there were some words kids were not supposed to say. He had heard them in movies and shouted in crowds when his dad took him to basketball and hockey games. His parents warned him about those words and seemed to know what they meant. This new word was different. He heard it before they did and all they knew about it was that it was bad. Tantalizingly bad.
This was the first time Maxwell had ever held a tantalizingly bad secret. He could not keep it to himself. He had to tell someone. The next non-family member he saw was on the school bus the next morning. He sat next to a boy named James who was in his class. He did not know if he could trust James, but decided to share his secret anyway.
“I know a word we aren’t supposed to say. It’s new. The grownups don’t like it. Except for Mr. Gary. He likes it.”
“What is it?”
“BEEP.”
“What’s it mean?”
“I don’t know. You say it when you’re mad. It could mean a lot of bad things.”
James repeated the word. “BEEP. BEEP.” He smiled to show he liked it.
The word spread from there. Maxwell and James told Finnigan and Reed about it. By first recess, they were all regularly using the word and even calling each other BEEPs. By lunch recess, half of their second-grade class knew about the new, forbidden word. When they were forced to return to their classroom and listen to Mrs. Sheraton, they whispered the word back and forth behind her back. It felt like an act of defiance for making them sit there in their desks.
The afternoon was cold. As her students filled in another worksheet, Mrs. Sheraton complained out loud about the temperature in the room.
“Does it feel colder in here than it did ten minutes ago? I don’t think the heat is working.”
After another half hour of fussing, Mrs. Sheraton left the room to retrieve Mr. Gary. He returned with her and immediately agreed that there was something wrong. He checked the classroom’s thermostat. Then he left to find a ladder. He brought it back and poked around above the ceiling tiles.
“I think the main vent is stuck,” Mr. Gary said to Mrs. Sheraton. “This old school is barely holding together. Let me grab a wrench.”
Mr. Gary found a wrench and hammer and pounded on something in the ceiling. No one in class paid any attention to their worksheets as they watched Mr. Gary on his ladder. He used his wrench to get hold of something and he pulled hard. “C’mon! C’mon!” he yelled with a grunt. Then he let go of the word. “BEEP!”
Half the class broke into giggles. The other half swiveled their heads in bewilderment, sure they were missing something.
Mrs. Sheraton looked up at Mr. Gary with a scowl. “I understand you’re frustrated, but please don’t swear in front of my class!”
Mr. Gary stopped tugging on his wrench and took a step down his ladder. “What are you talking about?”
“That vulgar word you used. I don’t want you using it around my students.”
Mr. Gary looked confused. Then he laughed and said, “Oh, you mean varken? That’s not a swear word. It means pig in Dutch. My grandpa used to say it all the time when he was mad. I borrowed it from him.”
Mrs. Sheraton chuckled and almost blushed. “Oh, I see. It sounded so harsh when you said it. I just assumed it was something bad.” Mrs. Sheraton repeated the word. “Varken. Varken. So, it means pig, huh?” She turned and looked directly at Maxwell. “I was mistaken. It’s not a bad word after all. You can say it as much as you want.”
The word sounded different when it came out of Mrs. Sheraton’s mouth and then she laughed about it. The tantalizing magic disappeared. Maxwell sunk in his chair feeling embarrassed as half the class shot him strange looks. It was as if he had sold them trading cards that turned out to be worthless.
Maxwell never used the word again. Neither did anyone else in his second-grade class. And from then on, Maxwell was much more careful about the words he let live in his head.
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