the cock files...

At some point, in any given academic year the inevitable conversation about cock rears its ugly head (metaphorically speaking of course) in my english classroom. It's not that I have cock marked as one of the "must teach" topics of the semester, nor does it appear in the list of "1,000 english words you simply must know", but somehow or another it always manages to work its way into the conversation. The conversation can start in one of three ways:

1. The innocent quest for knowledge: "How do you say gallo in English?"

2. The possibly not so innocent question out of the blue: "What is cock"? Is it just me or is it the absence of an article in that sentence that instantly cues tacky music and images of impossibly busty women writhing suggestively with muscly, naked men endowed with gobsmackingly large... members?

3. And of course, the teenagers who never knew it had anything to do with the male of the poultry family, and who have no doubts whatsoever of its function in phrases like "Show me your cock" and who use it with startling regularity whenever the opportunity presents itself. "I would beat him to death with my cock" would have to be one of the more creative examples I've seen in a 3rd conditional Q&A exercise.

Some weeks back...

Student A: Mondraussie, what is "cock"?

Me: Well it can mean either a male chicken or it can also be a slang term for penis. For that reason I suggest you use "rooster" when talking about chickens, just to avoid any confusion.

Student B: What did she say?

Student A: She said "cock" means "polla"!

Student B: Ahhh... of course. Suck my cock!!

There was a momentary stunned silence as other members of the classroom digested this extraordinary statement and its meaning. I politely suggested that 8.15am in the classroom was probably neither the time nor the place for that type of activity. The rest of the class fell about the floor laughing.

Apparently internet porn is also a useful language acquisition tool.