Curses

As the URL of this blog would imply, I lived a fairly sheltered childhood. (Though not one so repressive I was wholly unable to adapt when thrust out into the world, nor one that left me with feelings of resentment toward my parents for raising me as such. While I wouldn't be as strict myself, I certainly preferred that to the alternative extreme - and besides, with the internet it became increasingly easy to educate oneself.)

Did this lead to sundry embarrassing instances in which my ignorance of the secular world was cruelly exposed, to the delight and amusement of my peers? Yes, it did (Oh Urban Dictionary, where were you in 1996?)

Can this upbringing still be seen reflected in my everyday life? Without a doubt.

And if one spends any sort of prolonged time with me, likely the most obvious trait they might notice where this continues to shine through is via the fact that I essentially never swear. (18 months ago I would have said straight up "never" but we'll get to that).
 
A fear of saying "bad" words was molded into me at a very young and impressionable age. It all started one morning shortly before my mom took me to pre-schoool, when I was only three or four years old. I had just discovered the similarity between the words "pop" and "poop" and thus I was gleefully jumping around the den and the kitchen singing "Pop Goes the Weasel" as loudly as possible, except I was replacing almost literally every word, not just pop, with the word poop. It went something like this: "Poopy go poop the poopy go bush the poopy chased the poopy..." (My creative juices were in fine form).

My mom walked in and heard this and looked shocked. She scolded me, looked down and said "Never say that word again!"

Now I knew it was a semi-inappropriate word, but I thought I was just being mischievous, I didn't know it's usage was absolutely forbidden in our household. I told her I promised I wouldn't. And while I've obviously used it since then, I didn't for years and years, and even to this day there remains a tiny twinge of reluctance. (can you imagine? I was a boy who didn't say "poop," it's almost a contradiction in terms).

This incident seriously scarred me, and I still truthfully can't understand why my mom was so upset. While yes, she did herself have an even more sheltered childhood, I still have a hard time reconciling her actions that day with the person I know; it just seems so out of proportion to what the situation called for. That story makes her seem like a movie antagonist or something. While I guess she achieved her desired result, I doubt she knew that scolding would warp my perspective on using foul language for at least the next two decades, and, let's face it, probably the rest of my life.

But I'm not going to place the onus of that entirely on her; much of it was just the way I'm wired. Ever since I can remember I've had a desperate fear of having people, especially authority figures, displeased with me. I could barely stand the thought of it and I'd do whatever it took to try and get back in their good graces whenever I screwed up. For instance, I don't ever recall my parents telling me I had to behave or do well in school, but I just remember during kindergarten having this unshakeable instinctive feeling that they would be disappointed in me if I performed poorly or got in trouble. This was the primary, if not only, motivating factor that drove me to get good grades during the first few years of my education, and yet I don't think I ever even had a conversation about it with my folks.

So, as you might imagine, I extrapolated the "Poop Goes the Weasel" episode onto other words as well. After that I was always terrified of using almost any word that I thought had any chance of being considered "bad." As I got older and encountered new colorful phrases, I would generally automatically assume I couldn't use them. Crap, crud, piss, dipstick, b--ch, b--tard, s--t, d-mn, hell (except at church) were all immediately filed into the off-limits stack. Even, I kid you not, fart, pee, and butt (particularly due to "Beavis and Butt-head") were initially placed there before I realized just how tame they really were.

I tried out "that sucks" once or twice, but mom was none too happy about this either, and thus it went, straight onto the black list.

But if I didn't learn them at school or in other social contexts, I naturally didn't understand that they might be "bad", which led to a few additional traumatic scoldings that renewed my fear of cursing all over again.

I picked up "jack-ass" when I was about seven from Looney Tunes of all places, and something about the novelty of the phrase stuck out to me. So much so, that immediately following the show, I ran downstairs to where my mom was doing laundry and began saying "jack-ass" in a sing-song voice right in front of her. A look betwixt astonishment and anger overcame her face and she yelled once more, "Don't ever say that!" I, in turn, became equally confused and afraid, for I had no idea what I'd done. I almost started crying and muttered that I'd just seen it on Looney Tunes. When she saw how surprised and hurt I was, she hugged me and said it was okay, and that she understood that I didn't know any better.

A year or two prior, when I was five or six, something similar happened. We were on a road trip out east and I was sitting next to my grandma in the middle row of our minivan. I must have seen or heard something that surprised me, because I said "oh my God!" I hadn't said that often, if at all, before, but I'd heard people using it frequently and, either consciously or subconsciously I'm no longer sure, decided to try it out instead of my usual "oh my gosh!" My mom, sitting up front, snapped back around and said "What did you say!?" My grandma, who must have misheard me, immediately stepped in and said, "No no, he said 'gosh'!" Again I was confused and a little scared, because I had no clue I'd said something wrong until I saw the reaction it elicited; I'd never even heard of the concept of taking the Lord's name in vain. I felt like I'd dodged a bullet with my grandma mishearing me, and, quickly picking up on the context clues, I too jumped in and said "yeah, I said 'gosh'!" Well, that made two Commandments broken in under a minute (I certainly knew by this age I wasn't supposed to lie, but like I said, I'd do anything in order to not offend authority without a second thought), or I suppose even three if that counts as dishonoring my mother. My mom hesitantly accepted that she must have been the one who heard wrong.

Humorously, upon being told not to swear, I thought this also encompassed the act of swearing, or pledging, too, as in "I swear I won't cheat in school." So when friends would ask me to recite a vow that used the word "swear" I'd adamantly refuse. I'd promise, I'd pledge, but I wouldn't swear. To affirm our mutual allegiance to some, undoubtedly highly important, principle my classmate Tim once asked me to join him in a pinky swear. When I shook my head, he implored me that it was just a "super-duper promise!", but I wouldn't yield.

So far most of these have been small potatoes, but what about that mightiest of all dirty words, the F-bomb? 

Well, I learned the F-word in second grade from my rebellious nominally Mormon neighbor Craig. Living just a block away, he would often invite me over as we walked home from school, and so it was this day. We were standing in his front yard, next to one of his parent's cars, and he was writing various swear words with his finger in the dust on the hood of the car. Watching on, I giggled impishly until I saw him write one I'd never seen before. My eyes widened at this new word. He didn't need to say it, its pronunciation was easy to figure out. Not realizing quite how strong it was, and feeling a bit of a rascally streak, I too stepped over and wrote out the word in the smudges on the car hood, an act which I'd later feel slightly awed and embarrassed over.

It was around this time, as my peers began to up the frequency and diversity of their oaths, that it became increasingly conspicuous to others that I never swore, often going out of my way to avoid such words or being forced to use lame substitutes. I took a lot of grief over my continued reliance on overtly chaste exclamations such as, "Gol' darn it," "Oh my gosh," "What the heck?!" or even "bottom" instead of "butt" in the early days. (Adopting a Minnesota accent, Choma would mockingly respond to these during high school: "Gosh dang it to heck-fire!") This led to multiple occasions around 3rd or 4th grade where my friends would plead with me to use any sort of curse word. "Come on, just once, we won't tell anyone!" The better part of one whole recess was spent this way in fact, while I would stubbornly stick to my guns. "No, I don't swear," I'd say over and over, and it was as simple as that, no rationale required.

As I became more self conscious about not swearing though, I did begin to budge and adapt in little fits and bursts as the years carried on. "Darn" turned into "Shoot." "What the heck?!" turned into "Freakin' A" which turned into "What the frick?!"And sometime around middle school a shift began, whereby when learning new questionable words and phrases, I began assuming that they were okay to use, rather than presuming from the outset they were off limits. One of the first such sayings I adapted during this time was "this blows"; while it seemed pretty obvious to me my mom would disapprove of this, since it's essentially the exact same thing as "this sucks," I had plausible deniability because I'd never actually heard her condemn this version.

I also started to get more creative with my euphemisms, primarily by poking fun at myself with over the top replacement words. "Dagnabit!" , "Tarnation!" , and "What in the blazes?" were among some of my amusingly old-fashioned choices. Another one I really enjoyed was Johnson's conversion of "W-T-F" to "W-T-*" where you actually say "star" where the "F"/asterisk should be, all while sporting a gee-whiz grin. This trait would even manifest itself non-verbally as I thought it would be funny to start flicking people off with my ring finger. I also began coming up with my own oaths on the spot during fits of frustration, searching for and using any word beginning with F that popped into my head. This lead to such classics as "Oh Farmington" or possibly my favorite, and still used, "Fruits and Barley!" which was borne during a particularly taxing game of Madden, (and which it turns out is actually a product?).

Eventually too I began bringing old off-limits lingo back into the fold. "Douche,""tool", and "prick," for instance, reentered circulation (I recall much to Choma's amusement and surprise). Soon I began experimenting with "cock" and "dick." (sorry, my inner 11-year old wouldn't let me pass that one up). I could get a laugh out of my college roommates just by saying "Balls!"

You've  probably noticed a pattern that it was almost always my mom who would take issue with my language, and likely part of the reason I began taking some increased liberties with my word choices over time was because I realized my dad didn't really seem to care that much. He doesn't often talk about his youth, but based on a few observations and anecdotes, it began to dawn on me that his childhood, in contrast to my mother's rural upbringing, was probably at lot closer to my own. Subsequently, while he didn't necessarily condone it, he seemed to understand that was just the way most kids talked.

One of my first clues in this regard came during sixth grade. I had just purchased my first CD ever, Standing on the Shoulder of Giants by Oasis, while with my mom at the local mall's Sam Goody. My eyebrows raised in alarm as I noticed that the first track was titled "F---in' in the Bushes," and I made absolutely sure my mom never saw the back of the case. A day or two later my dad asked if he could look at the album and, not seeing any way out, I handed the disc over to him, fingers trembling. He inspected it for a few seconds, while my heart pounded like a war-drum, and then handed it back. "Maybe don't listen to that first one very much," was all he said. This was a revelation; if my mom had seen the track name I have little doubt I'd have never seen that CD again.

About a year or so later, my dad was rummaging through some boxes in the basement when he found an old picture of him and some of his friends smiling on a bus during a middle school class field trip. My dad showed me the picture, then grinned and asked me if I saw what one of his friends was doing. He pointed to one particular guy and I leaned in and noticed that the boy was flipping the bird to the camera. I giggled, once again thinking how disapproving my mom would be.

Finally, senior year of high school I was showing my dad something in my yearbook. When he tried to pick it up and take a closer look, I held my grip firmly, afraid he would begin paging through and see all the off-color jokes, comments, and drawings made by my friends on other pages. He looked oddly at me and then, surveying the situation, said, "I know people write dumb things in these, it doesn't matter." Maybe he really did get it.

Still, almost without exception my parents themselves never swore, so despite these marginal encouragements gathered from my dad, I and my brother never truly began to either. I can only think of two times when this failed to hold true. Both were instances when my dad and I were in heated arguments, and he, trying to emphasize his point, said either my attitude or actions were "s--tty." The first time was in 8th grade while we were driving in a car to an activity I did not want to go to. While I was certainly startled by what he said, it actually didn't really serve his intended goal, and if anything it may have backfired. For while it did help underscore to me that he was extremely serious, I still thought I was in the right, and if anything I felt like I'd maintained the moral high ground because I never would have resorted to saying anything like that (not that I held it over his head or anything), while he had turned to rhetoric. The second was some similar situation during senior year.

Sometime when I was an underclassmen during high school, I began to reexamine whether I should continue my practice of not cussing. For I finally began to explore that undeniable truth that I'd been stubbornly avoiding for so long: they are, after all, just words. They're just noises we make with our mouths, there's nothing inherently wicked or wrong about these sounds made in this succession. And who decided that these particular words were off limits anyways?

After consideration though,  I decided to continue my policy of refraining from swearing. Primarily because, on the whole, it just made life a lot easier by not having to censor myself. Even if there wasn't anything inherently wrong with saying words, the fact remained that society had invested these words with a specific meaning, and most public aspects of society considered them improper because of these attached meanings. Thus, if I never swore, if curse words weren't the defaults my brain reached for when upset about something, then I never had to worry about accidentally letting such a word loose at the wrong time. In high school soccer, for instance, any player heard swearing, even if just at themselves, would receive a yellow card. Similar systems were true in classrooms, and during college I know a bunch of my roommates resented the fact that one or two of my other roommates didn't approve of swearing because it made them feel like they had to be on guard all the time. That has never been a problem for me.

(I also still fondly remember how, while shooting our last great ill-fated movie during high school at Kevin's parents' store, Kevin's mom walked into the room right behind Owen when he yelled "F--k!" after something went wrong. We all burst into laughter, and Owen, upon seeing her, turned a bright magenta and apologized profusely. It was moments like these that helped me reaffirm my stance.)

It's like the way it goes for some laws. You may not agree with a law and may have no moral qualms about breaking it, but you still might abide by it simply to avoid the penalties that would be assessed should you break it. Plus, just because in general I wasn't personally offended by their usage (ok, maybe sometimes in excess, mainly because it seemed to indicate a lack of originality), I knew other people were, and I wanted to respect that.

On top of it all, it was also true that, philosophical epiphanies aside, swear words still held a certain power over me that I was afraid to touch. During American Studies sophomore year, for example, we were reading Of Mice and Men aloud in class, and I had volunteered to read the part of Carlson. I had no idea that Carlson's part included an abundance of colorful language, including, "God d-mn" and "Hell" on repeated occasions. As I came across these words in the dialogue, I did my best to roll with the punches and not awkwardly hesitate, but I felt numb and embarrassed as I read, almost hazy. I probably doubled the number of swear words I'd used in my life during that one class period. 

(Still, there was something exhilarating about it too. Acting in a structured setting was about the only time I felt like it was semi-permissable for me to swear. The year before when portraying one of the eponymous jurors in a rehearsed performance of 12 Angry Men for English class, my character had a line where he was angry and used some mild oath, and I got a rush out of reading it with vigorous enthusiasm (to Hayne's great enjoyment). I also remember being a little envious of my brother getting to sing with the full passion of a revolution behind him "Damn their warnings Damn their lies!" when performing as Enjoloras in Les Mis that same year at school (partially just because it's super annoying having to skip or manipulate lyrics to avoid swearing while singing, but mostly cause of the aforementioned rush I envisioned). I also had discussions with him and I believe Johnson about how it seemed more acceptable in the context of a war).

The truth was though, I did start to think it was inevitable that I would eventually swear. I began swearing a lot in my head when angry and I began taking part in two separate activities around then, that, I believe I've mentioned before for whatever reason have a capacity to make me more irrationally upset than anything else: Tennis and Halo. While playing these two games, I would often have near fits, exploding with curses in my head, often even mouthing them externally, and trying my hardest to stifle myself so I didn't actually say them aloud. It was during Tennis that I developed the f-word substitute "Farmington" because one day when I was finding it especially difficult to keep my lid shut we were playing Farmington. (On a side note, this seems funny to me now. While Halo, on the rare occasion I still play it, does still get a disproportionate rise out of me, it's been years since I can remember getting that angry during Tennis. Back then I even once accidentally broke a racquet when I was frustrated. There's no way I would get that worked up now.)

If I was going to swear though, I decided I would save it for a really good reason. I often bickered with many of my friends about stupid stuff back then, generally due to some mutual combination of ignorance, and sometimes these arguments would escalate and become very heated. I always fantasized about dropping the bomb during some such argument, relishing the look of wide-eyed shock I imagined it would elicit, and inevitably leading to me winning the debate as they understood full well just how wrong they were due to how far they'd made me go. Sometimes I was almost hoping for it, hoping one of them would cross the line to such a degree that I would find it warranted to curse them out.

The summer after sophomore year I went to a soccer camp with about seven teammates from my traveling team. During this camp a bunch of them, including the popular ring leader, began all goading me, much as my buds had done in elementary school, to try swearing, though not in a mean spirited way. Eventually the ring leader just asked me why I didn't swear, and I told him about how I was just planning on saving it for a good moment, so the person would know I was serious. I've often considered this guy and his lackeys to be something of meatheads, but he pondered my response for a few moments, then actually said that he liked that reasoning, which in turn raised my respect for him and made me feel more confident in my decision.

Thankfully though, none of my friends during high school ever pushed me into a situation where I felt justified in swearing. I'm thankful first of all, just because I'm glad we never got into an argument that intense. Second of all, because upon reflection I think it likely wouldn't have met my expectations, just as my dad's decision to swear at me failed to sway my opinion. And even if it did win me the debate, I probably would have felt guilty about it.

I certainly got into my share of blood-boiling arguments with some of my friends in college as well, but by then I decided I didn't want to give them the satisfaction of knowing they had made me swear. I might bend, but I wouldn't let them break me. Besides, I'd become much more fond of trying to best my friends with well worded and well structured logic by this point. (One college friend swears he heard me let an F-bomb slip once during a Halo game, but I think he just heard me mumble "Frick").

As I finished and exited college though, I was still becoming increasingly self-conscious about how weird most people would find it that I didn't swear. I remember planning far in advance how when buying movie tickets for Inglourious Basterds or Kick-Ass I would let my friends get in the ticket line before me so when it was my turn I could just be casual and say "the same" when asked what movie I wanted to attend, rather than having to call it something awkward like "Inglourious Boys," as my mom refers to it. Obviously there's a difference between merely saying the title of a movie and using the words as exclamations during a dialogue, but I still figured it was just best to keep the words off limits altogether so my brain didn't slip up at the wrong time.

For the most part it actually got easier after college however. I didn't feel like it was inevitable I would begin swearing anymore. I never even really felt that strong of temptations, as it's generally considered somewhat taboo in the workplace, and I didn't have much of a social life in the early post-grad days. But while I no longer really had strong ethical scruples against using swear words, in addition to the practical reasons previously detailed there was another reason I decided to continue my restraint. It was a way for me to feel connected to my past.

I, like everyone, have changed a lot over the course of my life, and sometimes I get nostalgic and wistful thinking about the rigid wholesome boy I once was. My views on lots of things have evolved since then, and I've done a few things that I know even seventeen year old me wouldn't believe, or would at least be ashamed of. But by continuing to not curse, it helped make me feel, in a very tangible way, like I still really wasn't all that different.

But, one fateful day a little over a year ago, all that went out the window. I was blindsided by a marginally traumatic experience that felt like an I-beam to the forehead. It left me feeling deceived, angry, and embarrassed. While driving home on the highway after this incident, I felt a little like I was coming apart at the seams. I was jerking with little twitches and spasms that felt like shivers and muttering half-formed profanities in my head and under my breath. These weren't directed at myself or anyone else, but just at the situation in general.

Then, all of a sudden, I dropped the F-bomb aloud.

It wasn't intentional, and immediately afterwards I paused, surprised and almost wondering if I had really just said it, very aware what a "milestone" this was. I hesitated for another second, questioning whether I should fight back and not let the situation get the better of me, before caving completely. I said it again, louder and more forcefully this time, and just continued to say it, sometimes shout it, for the rest of the car trip. Each time I said it, it gave me a dull fleeting sensation of relief; I pictured myself using a hammer, with its head wrapped in a blanket, trying to bludgeon away all the negative emotions I was feeling with each successive strike, with each shout.

While it didn't make my problem go away, and I was only beginning the process of coping with the aftermath, the truth is it did help. If only for a moment each time, I felt good. Since then, I have taken to swearing on occasion when stupid or enraging things happen to me, but only ever when I'm in isolation, only as a release. I still refuse to swear in conversation with, or even in the presence of others (though, as my younger self guessed, I've come very close to slipping up a few times when in public). "Frick" is still my curse of choice when in polite society. And even in private, there are still many words I won't utter. The c-word, for one, is just so ugly and vulgar both in its inherent composition and its societal context, I won't even touch it. It's practically like a racist word as far as I'm concerned.

But what was it, what is it, about swearing that made me feel better? What provides that visceral satisfaction that comes with dropping an F-bomb? Part of it, I'm sure, is the forbidden fruit factor, but I think the rest of it is really as basic as it's a pleasurable word to say, especially for someone like me who greatly appreciates the aesthetics of our vernacular. I have little doubt there's a reason most four-letter-words are indeed four letters. Most expletives are one syllable, and contain at least one hard consonant sound. They're easy to say, and yell, with a range of emotions, and they seem to carry an intrinsic weight and ferocity.

Just take the "ck" sound for one. F--k, prick, dick, cock, something tells me that's not a coincidence. 

It's the same reason everyone's favorite word in Spanish is "sacapuntas," while "aisle," for instance, would make a terrible swear word. The same reason why "frick" makes such a good euphemism. The same reason why, the first week of 8th grade, my friends and I were gleefully repeatedly yelling "yeah Mitch!", with extra emphasis on the "ch" sound, at our two friends named Mitch, before being chewed out by a disbelieving gym teacher.

Perhaps the most surprising thing though, was how little guilt, or anything really, I felt about my abrupt change in policy. There was no crisis of conscience, no lingering regret about having said the things I'd said.

In second grade when Zach L. told me to say "ship" while biting my tongue, and I fell right into his trap, saying something that very closely resembled "s--t," I nearly teared up. While reading as Carlson that day in American Studies, my pulse hastened, I began sweating, and I struggled mightily to disguise my anxiousness. But this time, nothing.

Maybe it was just a matter of context. Maybe compared to the other momentous ordeal my body and mind were going through, letting out a few cusses was no big deal, merely something my subconscious recognized as a necessary antidote for this desperate time. And maybe this finally aligned with the realization I'd made years before that these words really were just patterns of sound waves, not evil incarnate blown out of proportion by an adolescent mind fearing punishment.

Whatever the case, I guess I'm glad I didn't have any noteworthy mental or physical tolls, but I suppose this is one more certain sign I'm really not the same person I used to be. Though it's not like I'm excited about this whole development or anything. I wouldn't be surprised if I eventually revert to my even stricter old ways again, and if the catalyst for my cursing could have been avoided in the first place I'd certainly prefer that route.

But until then, Yippee-Ki-Yay Melon Farmer?