I am one profane motherfucker. I curse and I swear. A lot. It seems to flow naturally when I speak. Do I do it on purpose? Or to prove a point? To be honest with you, and I mean totally honest, I have no idea. It just happens.
I think I learned the F-word (fuck, for those of you who don't know), when I was in first grade or so. My friend told me about it. He said that we weren't supposed to use it. He said it was a "bad word." I gotta tell ya, I didn't believe him. I thought the whole idea was absolutely ludicrous.
A bad word? You've gotta be kidding me! That's the stupidest thing I ever heard!!
So I tried it out. On his mom. I was just sitting there, that very afternoon, in their living room (I lived in the apartment across the hall). Since I had no concept of its actual meaning or grammatical usage, I just let it fly. I said, quite simply, "Fuck." Just to see what would happen. Call it an experiment.
A deadly silence settled on the room. My friend was there, his mom was there. And she let out every bit of her New Orleans rage at me. (They were Cajun, but we all lived in Florida at the time). She was
pissed! She told me that they didn't use that kind of language in that house, blah blah blah. I'm sure you can imagine. She did not curse once, near as I can remember.
I learned an important lesson that day. I wasn't convinced that the F-word (fuck) was a bad word, but I did learn that it was a word you could only use in specific situations, like when grown-ups weren't around.
I've gone through various stages in my life where I cursed at different intervals, really depending on who my friends were at the time. If they were profane, I was profane. If they were clean, I was relatively (though not totally) clean-mouthed. In third grade, every time me and my best friend would curse, we'd make a big show of it, "Don't tell anyone I said this," we'd say, "But that guy is one Goddamned, motherfucking asshole!" And it would be this big, kind of secret thing between us, like a code.
Third grade!! We would use these words and it would be just between us. We didn't know what it meant; all we knew was it was the strongest, most blatant way to say how we felt. But we didn't use that language where anyone else could hear us.
In fifth grade, I briefly flirted with the softer version "frick." Now this is a strange thing. I mean, you say "frick," but you mean "fuck." Like when we'd play tag on the jungle-gym, and whoever was "It" was getting close and we'd say "frick." That lasted for a while. The cursing taboo lifted after fifth grade.
Oh, it came and went over the years, but by about 9th grade, I was pretty much set in my ways. I don't curse around my parents, but I swear so much pretty all the rest of the time, it's a wonder God hasn't smited me for the number of times I've used his name in vain. It must number in the millions. Let's see... let's say, for argument, 10 times a day, for the last 11 years or so (since 9th grade, this does not count pre-high school cursing)...carry the one...okay, I exaggerated a little. I've taken the lord's name in vain probably about 40,000 times. Give or take. This doesn't include all the instances of: fuck, shit, piss, ass, asshole, cock, cocksucker, bitch, tits, motherfucker, etc, etc, etc.
Anyway, there is one other strange observation that I've made. Notice how I said I didn't curse in front of my parents. Despite the fact that cursing comes as naturally to me as breathing around my friends, it doesn't seem to be particularly difficult to not swear in front of my parents. When the need arises, I can shift speech patterns as easily as I can tie my shoes.
There are plenty of cognitive/relational/psychological theories that explain this phenomenon, and I've looked into them from time to time, but I think this fact in itself is interesting enough for this blog post.
Good motherfucking day!
