I have always cursed. A lot. I snuck away to a George Carlin concert when I was 14, (I ordered it over the phone in a great, deep-voiced act of daring) illegally driving myself with my fresh learner’s permit to the venue all dressed up (in a blue blazer and tie, as if that would set them off my pimpled-faced scent) and looking at least…13. I was the youngest looking 14 you ever saw but I was also very crafty and light on my feet. The ushers never saw me and I quickly found my seat, put on my adult looking sunglasses, and took careful notes of the explosion of poetic vulgarity I was treated to for the next 2 hours. Absolute bliss and a true education! I really was going to school, so using my learner’s permit was completely permissible here.
Besides always being a huge standup fan, listening to Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy fastidiously at far too young of an age, I was also a huge fan of swear words. I never got to say them enough, with my professional responsibilities as the Preacher’s kid and the Teacher’s kid and being the oldest kid in the house. But I loved them. Didn’t think they were bad at all. Just extremely, graphically effective. And I still feel that way. I tell my girls there are no bad words, really. Just words we don’t say in some situations. I can’t be so completely hypocritical to say, “Don’t say that word! That word is bad!” Bullshit! I say fuck all the time! It may be my favorite word in the English language. An infinite number of meanings and shades of emotion, from anger to excitement, sadness to joy. Fuck me! Fuck you! Fuckity fuck fuck!
Needless to say my mouth was washed out many times as a kid, usually with Ivory soap, which is why I never use the shit. Every time I smell it I can still taste it, and let me assure you that the taste of soap never really leaves your psyche, especially when you smell and taste everything intensely like (fortunately and unfortunately) I do. I have forgiven my mother for doing that, but have been unable to forget it. I mean, fuck.
She tried a swear jar when I was a young teenager. Apparently it was getting out of control in the house, led by the eldest son, I am sure. It was either a quarter or a dollar for every swear word, I can’t remember. Whatever the punitive denomination was, the house owned all of my estimable fortune within a month. All those yards mowed, all those driveways shoveled, all gone. Gone to the head witch and main asshole’s swear jar. Where I’m sure it was to be given to charity or something. Yeah, right.
Well, my Mother is extremely smart, you could even say shrewd at times (and she would take that as a compliment.) But she didn’t fully think out the end game on this one. What happens when they run out of money? As in all the money they have in the world. Which happened to me one Saturday afternoon down in my room, when I spilled my glass of Coke on the floor and the glass broke and the soda instantly saturated the rug.
“Shit!”
“Swear Jar!” My Mom’s voice sang down the vents to my basement bedroom.
“Damn that bitch can hear everything,” I whispered to myself.
“I heard that too! 75 cents now!”
I finished cleaning the Coke explosion, muttering to myself the whole time, then went to my bank on my dresser. There was one lonely dollar left. Total bullshit, the incredible amount this little social experiment had cost me. But, suddenly, I felt very free. I realized I couldn’t be punished anymore. This was all I had left in the world! What were they going to do, garnish my future wages? I would quit my crap fry cook job at the Redwood Café! Bite me, assholes!
I walked upstairs with a gleaming, wicked smile, my last dollar bill on earth jutting out of my right hand. The freedom of nothing left to lose coursed through me. As did the litany of curse words that I had carefully cultivated, including the new bevy of poetic phrases I had acquired from Mr. Carlin. I walked past my frowning Mom in the kitchen, my last offending dollar held high.
“In the jar,” she said, pointing to the jar on the fireplace mantle. It was overflowing, as if we were all saving for some fantastically fun trip. “And you only owe 75 cents.”
“I know. This is the last dollar I have on earth. Figure I’ll spend the rest and keep on going.”
I jammed it in the jar and let loose with every single swear word I knew, stealing much of Carlins while making new combinations of my own.
“Motherfucking dickhead asshole turd burgler shitface twat tickler…”
I really let it fly, and creatively so. It felt so freeing, even with my mother in the next room hyperventilating in silence. I ran out of breath and reloaded a few times until every single curse word and their combinations I could conceive of were out of me and ringing around the house, ending with an operatic “GOOOODDDAAMMMMMIIIITT!”
I walked back through the kitchen to get to my room. Mom was tightly smiling, fuming, and eating a sandwich at the same time.
“Impressive,” was all she said, sandwich still in her mouth. She never talked with her mouth full.
“Thank you.”
It was never mentioned again, and was the death of the swear jar. I tried not to swear around her again. Like I said, she is shrewd, and might kill me rather than take my money. Perhaps because she had already made enough money for a fur coat, who knows.
So needless to say it would be extremely hypocritical to come down on my kids hard for swearing. But one Sunday when we were cleaning out the car outside the house in Santa Barbara, really going at it hard, pulling everything out and vacuuming. Sophie was 18 months and pretending to drive, standing up with her hands on the steering wheel looking cute as hell. People passing by stopped and waved at her, and she waved back and flashed her four teeth.
Then she started giggling maniacally and screaming, “Fucking Nana! Fucking Nana! FUCKING NANA! HAHAHAHAHA! FUCKING NANA!!!”
Now people were passing by with looks of horror and judgement, whispering and pointing and clucking their tongues. A routine I would become accustomed to as a stay-at-home Dad, but one that was fairly new for me at the time. Goddammit. People walking home from church, pretty college kids out jogging, our neighbors and grandparents enjoying the Sunday Santa Barbara-ness of it all, subjected to a severe litany of profanity by our walking infant, who had less than a hundred words kicking around her large round head. And one of them was the verb fuck, which she knew how to form as an adjective! We should have been proud, really. At least she was using it properly.
“Sophie. Shhh. Shhhh!” C. said, grabbing Sophie and clutching her to her chest like she was saving her from a marauder, which apparently was me, as she shot me a burning look of death. Sophie continued to giggle and scream “Fucking Nana!” but it was muffled by C’s breasts which her face was buried in.
“What, it’s not just my fault! We both gotta clean up our mouths. Yours is just as dirty as mine,” I said, trying so very hard not to laugh at the smothered profanity leaking out of her chest. “OK, not quite as dirty as mine. But still. I mean, damn.”
So just like we baby-proofed the house when we moved in, covering all the sockets she tried to stick forks in, locking all the cabinets with poisons she would undoubtedly gargle with, and padding all the sharp corners of furniture that she would impale herself on (I’ll stop there, there’s much more but it makes us seem a little crazy and we are NOT,) we tried to swear proof the house. I first went with the trick I learned from my Mormon work friends in Hollywood, with neutered phrases such as “C-suckin a-hole,” or “You M-F’n C!” (Apparently the Mormon God either can’t break that code, or gives them a pass because it’s not all there, but C. would give me neither of those options.) So I just swallowed the swear words. I still started to say them, but swallowed 95% of the audible part of it. I had to say something, or explode! It seemed a good compromise. I mean F’n A!
The deprogramming was eventually successful for our tiny Sammy Kennison. No more swear words, in public or at home! Except my Mom reported that when 2.5 year old Sophie dropped one of her toys yesterday afternoon, she said, “Aww, shit.” My best friend Tom was just in town for a week and was completely incapable of abstaining, obviously, and left us some gifts.
So we’re still working on it. Parenting is some hard fu—– work.