Flashback six months… 

It is a Saturday morning and the kids, ages 6, 8, and 11, are downstairs watching cartoons.  I am enjoying a long, hot shower and a few precious moments of peace.  Suddenly, I hear a stampede of feet running up the wooden stairs.  Screams.  More screams.  I ignore the noise, knowing that my husband will mediate whatever is going on.  Ten minutes later I emerge from the bathroom wrapped in my towel to find my husband still laughing to himself.  The stampeding feet belonged to the two older children, rushing upstairs to tattle on their six-year old sister, Alice.  “Daddy, daddy…Alice said the F-word!”, they screamed.  And one set of feet slowly followed, leaving a trail of tears up the stairs.  Huge eyes look up at my husband, “But Daddy, I don’t even know what the F-word is!”  Bad luck when you are learning to rhyme and start with the word duck. 

I am not good at swearing, except in my head.  We are not puritans, not overly strict, or overly religious, or anything else that would preclude us from letting a little curse word slip. We just don’t do it. We swear so infrequently in my house that my kids gasp when they hear a bad word in a movie. Even the words “shut up” make them shudder.  I have started to wonder if I am somehow damaging them by not exposing them to some good four letter words every now and then. To be honest, I am not sure how I will write this post because there are some words I don’t think  I can make myself type, but I’m going to give it a try. 

“Horse shit” was my parent’s swear word of choice.  They must have thought the addition of an animal classification somehow made it more acceptable.  I specifically remember one incident with my mom, on the phone with our local newspaper editor who had written something unflattering about her in an editorial. She finally burst and said “Horse shit, Ira.”  She threw the newspaper in the fire and cancelled her subscription but every time I saw that newspaper on the stands, my mom’s words rang in my ears. “Horse shit.”  That was it.  I don’t ever remember my parents uttering another swear word. Especially not the f-word.  That was crossing an uncrossable line.

My first attempt at swearing was in fifth grade, fresh off of a phone call with one of my best friends. I was crushed by something she had said, slammed down the phone, went racing across my parent’s bedroom in tears, and blurted out “Kim is such a bitch.”  I thought I would be banished for life but I think my mom had sympathy for my social pain and never mentioned my indiscretion.  Years later, I was working at a kayaking school in northern California.  A free flowing place where clothing was often optional and alternative lifestyles were the norm.  Swearing was just another means of expression and somehow, half way through my first summer, it was noted that I never swore.  Several of the kayak instructors took it upon themselves to teach me the fine art of saying the f-word and meaning it.  I was an eager student, but every time I tried to land a well placed f-bomb they laughed in my face.  Very humiliating.  I gave up.

Then, I met my husband, well-versed in swear words of all types.  What happened to him?  He could have passed the torch to my kids but, no, instead he gradually whittled those words out of his vocabulary.  I never told him to stop, I swear I didn’t.  It just happened, slowly.  Maybe it was because we became parents. 

Becoming parents, now that’s a time when any woman should be allowed to swear, f-word included.  Who doesn’t swear during labor?  I think I did.  If I didn’t, I should have. Time magazine said so.  In an article in their Health section for god’s sake!   The article is titled “Why Swearing Is Good For You: It not only vents frustration, but a new study shows it actually alleviates physical pain.”  Great.  By not swearing, I am neglecting to pass on to my children a necessary life skill.  But, wait, I keep reading and start to feel better.  According to Richard Stephen’s, who conducted the study, too much swearing may have “a dulling effect on these verbal painkillers.”  He goes on to say “That’s one of the reason’s that I think people should not overuse profanity.  That’s not because I’m a prude but because it blunts swear words of their power when you need them.  You should save them for just the right occasions.”

Validation, at last!  I feel better. I can stop trying to increase my swearing capabilities.  And, I am going to stop worrying about teaching my children to swear.  Somehow, that's already been taken care of.

 Flashback to a recent family dinner… 

My husband and I are engrossed in some kind of conversation when I notice that the 8 and 11 year olds are making muted grunting noises and counting something with their fingers.  The daughter has five fingers up.  The son has eight.  He looks up at me and smiles.  “We are counting how many swear words we know.”  And he goes back to making funny, unrecognizable grunts. He pauses and looks up at me.  “Does it count as a separate word if I add ‘hole’ to one I already said?”