My 17 year-old said it best—“I don’t need to cuss. I know lots of big words!” It reminds me of a time when I was still in high school. Some friends and I were going to hang out at the river and swim. I, having been raised to not be a pansy, decided I would “break the ice” and be the first to jump in. There would be none of this trying out the temperature and slowly acclimating one body region at a time. I knew the trick was to jump in over my head and get it over with and that’s exactly what I did!
The expletive I uttered actually came out in multiple syllables. But you have to understand, that water was really (really) cold, and I made sure to get the warning to my comrades waiting patiently on the shore for my assessment. Through half closed eyelids and rapid intakes of minute levels of oxygen, I could make them out as they processed my report. I was the only one who ended up in the water that day. Evidently, if it made me cuss, it was just too dang cold!
I do remember consciously making the decision that I wasn’t going to cuss, but my motives weren’t exactly pure or moral. It was just that I had noticed far too many of my peers did and I hated to be just like everyone else, so I opted to describe more eloquently how I felt about the current state of the union or the weather that day. I wasn’t really sure that anyone had even noticed the absence of 4-letter words in my vernacular until that day at the river.
Imagine a world where, instead of the stock, one-syllable response to a square hit of a hammer on the thumb, one exclaimed, “For the LOVE of all that is good and holy, my thumb feels like it’s just been stung by a bee, sliced with a knife, and burned on a red hot coil! I have NEVER hated an object more than I loathe this HAMMER and it’s all I can do to prevent myself from HURLING it at our sliding glass door and giving it a PERMANENT burial in the back yard!!” I actually feel better already, and it’s been years since I’ve hit my thumb with a hammer!
I find it a bit entertaining when a soldier apologizes to my husband, a chaplain, for abbreviating his feelings to a one-syllable sentiment. As if he’s never heard (or said) it himself or that somehow God only cares if he cusses in front of clergy. Cussing is like a second language in the military and it’s so common place that many feel self-conscious if they don’t speak the lingo. I guess the best argument in favor of it is the expediency of the communication, but as for me, I’ll stick with the big words! It’s way more entertaining from my perspective.
Well said. Being the daughter of a Christian and a Navy man, I grew up occasionally hearing a four-letter word. It usually required something horrific to have happened! So, when we narrowly avoided a major wreck on the way to school, I without hesitation, let the word, shhhh..., come out of my mouth! My dad had never heard that word from me (and I was in high school!) As we sat in the middle of the road, with traffic behind us, waiting for us to move on, I thought it was the end for me! My father looked at me with horror and anger! After I realized what I had let come out of my mouth, I was quick to throw my dad off by saying, "I learned it from You!" Needless to say, we both have had to work on cleaning up our mouths!
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