Bad Words and Walking

[ailbhe]

Yesterday morning early we brought Linnea to the playground in the rain and two tiny boys - they were very tiny, this is me saying it, I'd know a tiny boy if I saw one, though I couldn't reliably identify a large one - were casually using the word Fuck. They weren't swearing, or swaggering, or talking about sex - it was an ordinary punctuation word, like "um" or "er" to them.

I found this very sad.

Shortly after we first moved to this house, I observed a parked car on the opposite side of the street, and a man shouting at a boy to stop being a fucking idiot and get in the fucking car. The boy was pre-pubescent, or possibly barely pubescent but I don't think so, and the man was definitely old enough to be his father, so it seems probable that he was.

I found this infuriating.

Is this a terribly oldfashioned attitude? I mean, I don't generally have a problem with adults swearing in front of children, though teaching tiny tots obscene language is more amusing if you use erudite obscene language, but there's something very depressing about the use of perfectly useful swears as non-words. And I just don't think people should swear at each other anyway, especially not adults swearing at children. It's nasty and yuk.

In other news, the Health Visitor says that Linnea can walk, so I can stop being all self-effacing and saying "She doesn't do it for very long, you see, so maybe it doesn't count." She's nine months and three days old, and she can walk.

That's over a month earlier than I did it. I called my mother to let her know.

This morning, Linnea and I slept in and then danced to Dolly Parton. It's a good way to start the day.

Comments

[baronscartop.livejournal.com]

I have been known to use the occasional cuss word.

In fact, I believe in it. I once composed an essay about the proper use of cussing to get one's point across (citing Appetite For Destruction as a perfect example of how to do this effectively), but as I cannot now locate this essay perhaps it was only composed, and not actually written. I look forward to the day when someone says to me, "There's no need for that kind of language," so that I can reply, "Pardon me, but I have a degree in English Literature, and I am a writer. I will keep my own counsel as to which words are appropriate at which times, thank you kindly," but alas I have been waiting ten years for this opportunity with no end in sight.

So okay, I swear a lot. A metric fuckload, even.

But one of the reasons I had to quit the warehouse was because it was creating a habit whereby Fuck was used not merely as puncutaion, but to indicate the space between words in even the most otherwise-neutral of sentences.


Parents shouting at kids is another matter entirely, and an epidemic in my area. Someday soon I am going to suggest to one of these parental paragons that if she did not want children, perhaps she should have kept her legs shut.

(See? Swearing is for emphasis. Insulting requires vocabulary.)

t!

[ailbhe]

My mother believes that swearing should require vocabulary, too, and not involve comparing people or behaviours to perfectly innocent and pleasant animals, organs or bodily functions.

It's *hard* to use "fuck" as a casual interjection when you have been brought up to think about what you're saying. Mind you, in front of my mother, no-one even says crap... Though Rob said Bugger, once. She "didn't notice", which is what she does. It's very very effective.

Mind you, if Rob says "fuck", run away. It means bad things. He doesn't swear. At all. He almost never says Damn or Blast or Sugar or Poot or Bollocks or God or... it's *really effective* when he does.

[baronscartop.livejournal.com]

> My mother believes that swearing should require vocabulary, too, and not involve comparing people or behaviours to perfectly innocent and pleasant animals, organs or bodily functions.

This is why I'm trying to replace my usage of "cocksucker" (since, hey, I happen to be in favour of this practice, I even encourage it) with the epithet "ratfucker," which not only implies lack of consent on the part of the sewer-dwelling rodent as well as subject's inability to score with one's own species, but also contains a couple of nice slides (R and F; not sure proper term) as well as those expressive little plosives.

> It's *hard* to use "fuck" as a casual interjection when you have been brought up to think about what you're saying.

In my example, it's more a case of having taught myself to think about what I'm saying.

> Mind you, if Rob says "fuck", run away.

As you might expect, the danger signal from me is... silence. More to the point, stillness.

t!