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I Don’t Give A #!&@ About Cursing
The parenting battle I’ve chosen not to fight.
Age five: I gleefully and randomly shouted a word I’d heard a character shout in a movie (“Asshole!”) My imitation was flawless. I was immediately rebuked with a slap that stung well beyond the initial contact.
Age twelve: I was told that anytime I complain that something “sucks,” I should imagine myself saying “sucks a man’s dick,” because that’s what it meant. Presumably, the context was meant to appall me so deeply that I’d stop using the word. I did not.
Age seventeen: Enter the Mormon crew coach who made the entire team run hills because he heard some of us had been cursing on the bus — on a day he wasn’t even there.
Fast forward to age thirty-eight. I’m in the pool on vacation with my two kids, ages six and five. The mom of a teenage boy keeps shooting him withering glares and hissing at him to watch his language in front of the little kids. Based on her repeated admonishment, I can only assume he keeps slipping up. I can’t actually hear him, and my happily splashing kids are paying no attention. Finally, I call out to her.
“Don’t worry about it, seriously. Maybe it says something about the state of the world, but I just don’t care that much.”
