Young fuddy-duddy

This morning Isaac was talking to himself. "Oh my goodness, oh my goodness," he said. He paused. "Don't know why Ike saying 'Oh my goodness'!"

"Yeah, I don't know why either," I told him.

I didn't know why he was exclaiming on this particular occasion (and clearly, neither did he!), but I'm afraid I do know where he learned the exclamation in the first place. Yes, I'm the one who is primarily responsible for teaching him to speak like someone's 85-year-old maiden aunt. This morning he suggested we "step outside and see what weather like," another prissy phrase he picked up from me. (Craig, however, is the one who accidentally taught him to say "bloody hell," which manages to be both primly antiquated and surprisingly offensive. Along the same lines, Craig also sings Isaac songs from musical comedies of the 1930s with vaguely inappropriate lyrics. What are we going to say when Isaac wants to know what "Harlem coquettes" are?)

Anyway, about three months ago I remarked to Isaac, "Oh my goodness, what a big flatbed truck!" and it really impressed him. He seems to have realized that it is useful to have an interjection as part of your vocabulary. For a while he mostly used the phrase in the same context in which I had originally used it -- to comment on large pieces of machinery. I was slightly disturbed by the incongruity as he said things like "Oh my goodness, big tractor" -- shouldn't he be saying "Whoa, that's one big tractor!" or "Dude, check out that truck!" instead? What will his fellow vehicle-lovers think when he gets to preschool? In fact, what will they think when he announces he wants to "play with vehicles," instead of calling them trucks like everyone else does? I imagined him ostracized at school due to what the other children would no doubt find to be the irritating fuddy-duddyesque nature of his language.

But for the time being I've stopped worrying about it. He says "Oh my goodness" all the time now, not just when he's remarking upon impressive vehicles, and I'm sure it's only one of the many truly dorky expressions he's bound to learn from his parents. I don't think any of us can help it.

Edited to add:

Here are two more: "by gosh" and "yes indeed."