Do You Swear?

A co-worker recently related a story wherein his daughter discovered that colorful language was just the thing to "push mom's buttons" - and at 10 years old, had skipped all the way to some real doosies.

It's these occasions we parents live for: someone else's children acting beastly.

My children, of course, never act beastly. That is, if by "never" you mean "not more than three times an hour, on average, holidays excepted." But of all their beastly acts (at least the ones I've documented) foul language hasn't yet become an issue.

In fact, I'm confident in the knowledge that MY children will, in fact, never resort to foul language - largely because of a genetic disorder (passed down from their father) which renders them incapable of, for example, correctly interpreting song lyrics, or following movie dialog without asking me to repeat every sentence. "What did he say?" "Um. He said 'What the smell are you up to?'"

You can only repeat it if you've heard it correctly in context. Not that I'm suggesting that my co-worker's daughter heard it at home. There are plenty of places a child might pick up choice vocabulary. Like Catholic school.

Anyway, I think that there's a whole generation of folk that have positively worn out swear words, such that they no longer illicit the desired result, but instead sort of take the place of conversational pauses the way that the comparatively innocuous "um" or "ah" used to do. They also serve to slow down the gist of a conversation, so that a person can appear to be saying a lot, but actually is conveying little. While good training for a career as an auctioneer or politician, I can think of no other practical application for this skill.

What's sad, we have almost as many words to refer to "bad" words, as there are actual bad words. Curse words, swear words, cuss words, off-color words, dirty words, foul language, inappropriate language, obscenities, expletives, snarl words, just to name a few. We use plenty of brain power to avoid saying those choice phrases, but little in actually using them. I suppose this is because, when one nearly severs one's toe on the coffee table leg, one isn't usually in the mood to consult the Library of Congress for the appropriate verbal conveyance.

Snarl words have to be close to the tip of one's mind at all times, for ease of recall and use as the situation warrants. Because, call me a cretin, but sometimes it does.

I won't answer to the obvious anal retentive compulsions of those who use certain anal related expletives. I'd prefer to have my head somewhere else.  Such as on dessert.

Which is why I've implemented a "desserts only" policy on swearing in my household. This alternate swearing protocol serves the dual purpose of conveying appropriate frustration or cynicism, while at the same time turning the minds of those present to things sweet and delectable, sometimes to the beneficial effect of softening the original ire.

What in the name of rhubarb cobbler am I talking about?

I'm talking about getting the point across without reflecting poorly on anyone's mother.

Robin, of Batman fame, was a pioneer of the alternate method of swearing, and I feel he deserves some credit here. Except that his shtick always included a "holy" and I see no reasons to get deities involved here. Chocolate is close enough. I reserve chocolate expletives for my most serious frustrations. "Chocolate cheesecake with a graham cracker crust! That bone isn't supposed to be sticking out like that, is it?"

Bad words may be a fixture in this culture, but that doesn't mean we can't make the best of it. A person could possibly get a sugar-related disease from swearing too much, but other than that, I see no danger in it.

My co-worker thinks it is a losing battle, but he is just being a cannoli.