Bad Words

I never used to swear or curse. I grew up in an astonishingly curse-free, swear-averse environment. My mom and dad did both say the occasional shit, but that didn't count--as I explained in an earlier post, shit isn't really a Bad Word in the Dutch immigrant society that constituted my early universe. But hell, damn, dammit, God, Goddamn, oh God, my God, oh my God, Jesus, Christ, and Jesus Christ--if not used in the religious context, such words were absolutely, utterly forbidden. And I never heard either of my parents--or their friends-- use these words in a cursing context, not ever, not even during their pinochle games with friends that went long into the night and were accompanied by copious quantities of hard liquor. (Always a light sleeper and a highly skilled eavesdropper, I'd lie in bed and listen to the rumble of adult talk punctuated by shouts of laughter.) The only exceptions were the Donovans, but that made sense because unlike all my parents' other friends, the Donovans were not Dutch and they did not attend a Reformed or a Christian Reformed church. So they did utter the occasional damn and their girls, my some time playmates, frequently said, Oh my Gahd. But Mrs. Donovan was also the only mom I knew who smoked and drank beer, so it was all of a piece.

Swear words had a small but more marked presence in my childhood,via my older brothers and the occasional movie. I first heard cunt, for example, when I saw An Officer and a Gentleman in high school; I wasn't really sure what it meant tho' I sort of got the gist of it. And I first heard prick in an argument between my brothers; I just thought, huh? Fuck came in much earlier, I don't know how, when, where, or why (probably the Donovan girls); but I knew the word, and knew it was Really Really Bad long before I knew its literal meaning.

But the point is, I didn't say it. Or any of these words. Except in situations of extreme duress or heartbreak. That's what they were for. Words that tore through the curtains of respectability, words that broke all the rules in acknowledgment that extraordinary times demand extraordinary words.

Now I swear and curse all the time. Extraordinary words for extraordinary times? Umm, well, "extraordinary times" hardly seems an appropriate label for the mundanities of menopause. Mostly I'm just tired, confused, and pissed off most of the time, and so inclined to ignore the rules.

But my linguistic descent began before the onset of menopause. First, there was George W. Bush. Honestly, during the Bush years, how could one not swear and curse?

And then there was, there is, the Owen Factor. I realize parents are supposed to mold their children, rather than vice versa, but basically I've learned to swear from my son. Most kids are fascinated by Bad Words but Owen, Owen was enchanted, mesmerized, transfixed, obsessed. When he was tiny and the Bad Words were shut up and stupid, I finally told him if he felt like saying them, he should go into the bathroom. If he wanted to whisper Bad Words in there, or shout them, or chant them, well, ok. So, golly, that's what he did. Repeatedly. Enjoyed himself immensely. As Owen got older and we'd allow him to watch the occasional PG film, he'd giggle in absolute delight at every naughty word. And then we moved to England, where we lived in a working-class neighborhood and took the city bus to his school, so his mornings were filled with "fookin' idjut" and "bloody hell, yeh wanker." He lapped it up.

Then we came home from England and took the boys to an anti-Iraq war rally in New Orleans. Within minutes, 12-year-old Owen was part of a college group that had resurrected that old chant, "1-2-3-4, We don't want your fuckin' war!" He was so happy.

By the time Owen entered high school, we were battling constantly, and fruitlessly, against his bad language. Then, at age 15, he spent 6 months in South Africa on an international student program. Fundamentalist Christians, his host family nonetheless utilized fuck as comma, period, exclamation point, adjective, and qualifying adverb. And that was it. Owen came home, we acknowledged defeat in the language war, and somewhere along the line I went over to his side.

Which is a problem. Because when the bad times come, as they do, as they will, what words will I have left?