So, the other day (which sounds like the opening to a Letterkenny sketch), we got into a discussion at our house about cursing. I am a big practitioner of cursing. I’m a huge fan. I have been known to drop the F-bomb about fifty times minimum on a bad day. Or, to be fair, even a mediocre day.
I grew up in a cursing household. My father was a master at it. I can only hope one day to paint expletive-laden pictures half as good as his. He was in the navy during WWII (another post, another day.) Cursing could have been his day job, if that was a thing you could do for a living, and he would have been a millionaire. When my older sister came home from college for the first time, we were sitting at the dinner table and she was telling a story, dropping bombs all over the place, and my father, in all seriousness, asked my mother, “Where did she learn to talk like that?” We all stared at him in disbelief, and my mother put down her fork and said, “Where do you think?”
When I was in grad school I went skiing for the first time and blew out my knee on a black diamond run. The friend I was with misread the map, but he was an expert skier and I don’t think he was being super careful. First day skiing and bam, I’m the one on the slope being carted off by the ski patrol. It hurt so fucking bad. So they're carrying me on a stretcher, and then they had to—I kid you not—take me off the stretcher to transport me on the ski lift. Ridiculous. And I was cursing a blue streak. One of the ski patrol guys looked at me in admiration and asked, “When did you get out of the Navy?” That made me laugh, and I told him I’d learned at the knee of a sailor.
Now, when my kids were little, I tried to clean up my language. (I almost put act instead of language, but we all know that’s a lie.) So I came up with creative substitutes that I could switch to after the bomb was already half dropped. For instance, fahrvergnüven. Or my mom’s favorite, shite. Or silly things, like monkey shine or for criminy sakes. We realized I was not doing a great job the day my preschool age daughter, when getting ready for school, irritably asked, “Where are my fucking shoes?” So that failed.
Cue the other day. My sons, both in their twenties, were out on the screened in porch playing hackysack, and my older son, who is a chip off my cursing block, was dropping a few bombs. My husband (who is doing well after his surgery, but is very, very cranky right now) heard him, and he told him to stop cursing because someone might hear him. My son got very offended and walked off in a huff, and my other son was annoyed as well. And, to be honest, so was I. To be fair, I have to tell you that my husband was not a big swearer until he met me. I totally ruined his language. Not five minutes before this incident he had looked at the caller I.D. on his phone and exclaimed, “Fuck!” when he saw who it was. The scene is now set.
My husband thought my son overreacted, and also, that he should have stopped cursing because the neighbors might hear, to which my response was, “So what?!” I told him nobody cared, and the boys are both in their twenties now and they get to decide how they present themselves to the world, and that includes the way they talk. And my older son told him, nobody cares any more in 2024. And I agree with him. Honestly, I feel like curse words are defined more by their use as expletives to express annoyance, frustration or anger than by their original definitions that made them curse words in the first place. And they are just words. These days there are way bigger fish to fry on the global list of grievances.
Studies have actually shown that people who curse tend to be more intelligent, by the way, and I think I also agree with that. And that cursing is a good way to vent frustration and anxiety. Check, and check. Totally agree. Nothing works better when I drop or break something, or forget where my phone is for the fifteenth time a day, or stub my toe (cursing also increases pain tolerance), than a good old “fuck fuckkitty fuck fuck shit damn,” which is a favorite of mine.
So what do you think? Cursing: yay or nay? Do you care if you hear other people cursing? (As long as they are not cursing at you, of course, in which case we all care.)
My favorite things this week:
Sleep. You never know how much you need it until you are not getting enough of it. (One of my sons was sick this week, too, so I had two patients to take care of.) This Nodpod has become my best friend.
The kindness of strangers. I have been playing catch-up the last few days on things that fell through the cracks since my husband’s surgery, and people are being extremely kind and thoughtful about it, so shout out to kind people.
Portable stadium chairs.* We are almost halfway through my daughter’s high school lacrosse season, and my stadium chair has saved my ass. Literally. Get one if you have a future of bleacher sitting ahead of you.
Quote of the week: