Cursing is a daily practice for me. Cursing gives me comfort and releases my pent up anger and emotions and also helps me express myself. I also consider myself a very honest and trustworthy person. In those very rare times I have ever felt desperate enough to lie, I wasn't very good at it. In addition, apparently I give a trustworthy enough persona that my neighbor who barely knows me gave me the key to his house to care for his dog while he is out of town.
I was intrigued enough about this meme that I actually researched it a bit. I didn't really find anything with any concrete scientific backing.
Because using swear words is one of my favorite pastimes that has such a social stigma I have often wondered the origin of curse words. Who was it that designated a curse word a curse word? From my research it's apparent that words change meaning over the course of time so what was a curse word back then may not be considered a curse word anymore. Who gets to choose our society's potty mouth?? It's all dumb and relative in my opinion.
My mother was a very Godly woman and very straight-laced but I can remember a time in my younger days my mother using curse words pretty regularly. Her favorites were "shit" and "God Damn" if you can believe that one. She used them mostly when she was on the phone chatting with her friends or in a bad mood. Strangely enough I never heard the word "fuck" come out of her mouth.
About the time I was around 11 or 12 mom went through a personal life change and converted us all to the Baptist faith.(we had previously been raised Catholic) It was around this time that she forbade herself to watch soap opera's anymore and replaced the curse word "shit" to "shike". My thought was if you are just going to replace the explicative with another word that was giving off the same vibe then what was the point? I never brought it up to her because I knew it would be futile but I did wonder about it pretty often.
I never heard the word "God Damn" come out of her mouth again. I vaguely remember the Baptist faith considering the word "God Damn" blasphemous...whatever.
I also notice kids these days use curse words more openly than they did when I was a kid. When I was young cursing was something you kept hushed. Of course Summer uses curse words openly around us because we use cursing as part of our everyday language. We had to teach her at a young age that cursing was not a socially acceptable behavior and she had to be careful who she used those bad words around. I'm sure it probably confused her a bit when she was young but obviously she "gets it" now.
Either way, I will keep my curse words in order to keep my sanity....and my honesty.
I like a good venting every now and again, too. In our other business I worked with a group of young men that were friends of my son and members of a band. They referred to me as the Dudet in Charge. I got in the habit of using the word "fuck". It seems to be such a common word nowadays. I don't like the fact that it slips so frequently from my lips. Just not lady-like, you know. A favorite phrase a pharmacist I worked with was "Fuck me running". That was amusing, altho, maybe not possible .........?
ReplyDeletei don't really remember Mom saying GD, but I believe it. I do remember the word dammit coming from her often. My favorite Mom curse word was shitass. I never thought about it much as a kid, but some time later in life I realized it referred to someone who doesn't wipe after a nasty poop. That is some funny shit! While, at the same time, it is peculiar thing to call someone... like, how do you know?
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