"By Mary's nuts I did not" the father assures me, stern faced. "It's a word neither me nor the wife would have on the lips, I assure you."

"Ha" I chortle. "You and the wife wi' cock on the lips!"

Despite the inherent hilarity of this quip, the fella's face remains free of the faintest ghost of the slightest smile.

"So is that all he can say?" I quickly ask. "Has he never said a 'dada' or 'mama' or 'Decameron'?"

"Damn the bit of it. It's cock and more cock, day and night. And save us, didn't he even address the minister with the very same? 'Is this young Phillip?' says he, and says the youngster, 'Cock'. A fine thing for to be greeting a man of the cloth, a mouth all 'cock'."

Marveling some at the whole affair, I tilt my head back on the seat and say, "Wouldn't it make you wonder what our own first words were? The devil only knows what filth we maybe flung wi' the first waggle o' the tongue. It's not as if anyone would ever tell us. 'Oh, wee Jonathan, boys but I remember your first words clear as day. Fanny-fart, you said.'"

Despite his obvious embarrassment, anguish and guilt, the father slaps the arm of the chair at this and gives a great hoot of laughter. "Ho, boys" he says. "Wouldn't you just wonder, right enough."

"Or what other folks first words might've been" I continue, warming to the subject. "All the Big Men and the Big Women. Your David Hume's or your John The Baptist's or your Joan Of Arc's or who have you. Wouldn't it be great to find out, right enough?"

"Heth it would..."

For a time we sit silently contemplating this, the still threatened only by the intermittent scurrilities tossed to the skies by thon dirty, foul-mouthed infant.

II

Holland, 1632

The young Benedict de Spinoza chortles and giggles at the antics of his father, himself busy racing about the sitting room of their fairly spacious townhouse, ducking and diving and bounding behind the furniture. A right amusing sight to see, if not so enjoyable for the man himself, jumping about the place as he is by way of dodging the missiles flung his direction by Hannah, his wife.

"What were you doin' then, Horace, tell me" says she, a great wallop of a pan in her right hand, "If you weren't lappin' and lickin' away? Were you perchance lookin' for chinamen in thon fandang?"

"She told me she had a sore pain in the area!" roars the set-upon patriarch, hiding behind a chest of drawers.