Bastardized Bastard

I guess that when my cousins were small children they must have picked the up word "bastard" somewhere, and when their parents told them not to say it because it is a bad word, my cousins must have asked "why?"; in order to save themselves the awkwardness and difficulty of explaing to a child the complex issue of fornication, unwed mothers, and sex in general my aunt or uncle gave an alternate, repulsive and completely fictional story that was horrible enough to suffice as a properly acceptable story to a child. As a result, I was told the same story when my cousins introduced me to the word and subsequently explained it to me. So for years growing up, I thought a bastard was "a baby born without arms and legs," which is absolutely the most horrible thing to say to a child when you are trying to protect them from the truth. I think if I could do it all over again, I would have rather learned by saying it, getting smacked in the face, and told never to say the word again, which is much less cruel than making up a disturbing story so fundamentally grotesque that a child will never want to say it again--or at least for a long time. Needless to say, this post needs no picture.