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1. India on June 23rd, 2010 at 12:26 pm

   For instance, I have a friend who says that whenever she says the word “fuck” in front of her mom, her mom cries.

   Whereas me, I learn handy locutions from my mom such as “Hell motherfucking no!” And as my father lay on his deathbed, we told him and each other all the dirtiest jokes we could think of—most of which I’d first heard at the dinner table. One of my brother’s most endearing talents has long been his ability to beautifully mimic one of my mother’s best friends, whose every third word is “fuck” or “motherfucker.” Dad kept not only the American Heritage dictionary on the shelf right above his chair, to settle dinnertime queries, but also at least one slang dictionary. No word was off limits, when used for the sake of humor.

   But there were/are lines in my family, nevertheless: I remember Dad’s once scolding me for referring to someone as a “scumbag”; it had a more specific meaning for him than it did for me, and he found it distasteful. And when my mother really, really angers me, I can still say, “Fuck off. Just fuck right off,” and it means something.

2. Amanda Mae Meyncke on June 23rd, 2010 at 12:30 pm

   I remember being chided for saying “freaking.” when I was about eleven.

   The general rule seems to be as sisters we swear as much as we like (I definitely swear the most.) The girls sort of laugh but rarely swear themselves. (Mariokart 64 being the universally recognized exception.) If the youngest, at 12, swears at all, we all gang up on her and tell her quite seriously not to swear that it is a filthy habit.

   And I try my best not to let slip anything in front of my parents. Who swear on occasion but only when furious. An occasional “hell” is all right, but why offend needlessly?

3. India on June 23rd, 2010 at 12:34 pm

   I think I would have been laughed out of the house for saying “freaking.” Or they wouldn’t have known what it was supposed to mean.

4. Sheila Ryan on June 23rd, 2010 at 12:42 pm

   My childhood friends back in Texas grew up in conservative churchgoing families, and my non-churchgoing Connecticut transplant parents were considered sophisticated for, among other things, letting fly the occasional, “Godammit!” or “Jesus Christ!” or asking me what the h_ll I thought I was doing.

   Household use of “shit” or “fuck” would have earned me an earnest reprimand at least and probably a bonus lecture on propriety as well as subtle signals from my mother that once again I had proven myself a disappointment. I knew that well enough not to try it.

5. Deron Bauman on June 23rd, 2010 at 12:57 pm

   the idea of cussing was always fine, but not always the act. I remember getting in a lot of trouble for saying something sucked.

6. Cindy Scroggins on June 23rd, 2010 at 1:05 pm

   My parents used occasional profanity (damn, shit and the like), but I never cursed as a child. In fact, prior to my early 20s, I found foul language to be coarse and vaguely offensive. After a few weeks of submersion with Scott (my gay friend who cried his eyes out because Peter Sellers died before he had a chance to fuck him)–well, let’s just say that I was transformed.

7. India on June 23rd, 2010 at 1:16 pm

   Ooh, man. Back when I was webmama at poets.org, I wrote in the weekly e-newsletter that something “sucked” and got an irate reply from some biddy who found it offensive.

   To me, saying something “sucks” is a grade school–level cuss. It’s like little kids’ “hecka” versus teenagers’ “hella,” which should, in turn, sound not even slightly offensive to an adult. Then again, I’m the girl who’d never thought about what “scumbag” might refer to until her dad got squicked by it.

   I don’t remember what I wrote back to that lady, but it was not apologetic.

8. Daryl Scroggins on June 23rd, 2010 at 1:19 pm

   I grew up in a household of language teetotalers. We (my sister and I) were instructed that even the words ‘Dang” and “Darn” and the like were to be avoided because they really meant the same thing as the bad words they replaced. This prohibition extended even to mentioning the bad word as a quotation or in a question about a specific bad word. When I was living at home, I never once heard my parents use any swear word–or “crude language” as they called it. Oddly, this practice may have had something to do with my early sense of the secret power of words. Once when my sister was about eleven or twelve, and I was two years younger, I heard her day “shit.” Out of habit I said “Don’t say that,” and she said “Why not? Nothing happens.” I realized she was right and we both laughed, then spilled out a string of bad words that would have made a sailor blush. What a freeing moment that was. I realized that the language of transgression apparently went unnoticed by the cosmos–no earthquakes, no sudden clouds moving to cover the sun.

   My view since then has been that there are no “bad” words–there are just sometimes contexts in which it would be inconsiderate to use them. If everybody swore off the use of all present swear words today, there would be a whole new set of them in use tomorrow.

9. Joseph Logan on June 23rd, 2010 at 1:45 pm

   If everybody swore off the use of all present swear words today, there would be a whole new set of them in use tomorrow.

   Well put. There was almost no swearing in my family. I picked it up over years of traveling around. I like swearing, but it’s almost always tongue-in-cheek for me. I like meta-swearing, I think.

   That said, most of society values conformity.

10. Kelsey Parker on June 23rd, 2010 at 3:03 pm

    What Deron said is verbatim what I intended to say.

11. Kelsey Parker on June 23rd, 2010 at 4:20 pm

    The periodic table of swearing

12. Sheila Ryan on June 23rd, 2010 at 4:33 pm

    Ooh, Kelsey, that ranks with the periodic table of the refrigerator shelf-life of foods that I am too . . . darned . . . lazy to locate and link to.

13. Dave Vogt on June 23rd, 2010 at 9:36 pm

    All the usual curse words are ok with every individual in my family, but become taboo as the group size increases and even more so as the group becomes more diverse. E.g. if my mom and her close sisters (a group totaling five) are together they tend not to swear much at all, but if it’s myself, my aunt, and my cousin then to use such language wouldn’t be considered.

    On the other hand, sometimes what gets me in trouble isn’t the words I use but what I describe with them. You can usually do that just as effectively without cursing as with, although the cultural shorthand is useful.

14. from the comments : clusterflock on June 24th, 2010 at 9:25 am

    [...] Daryl Scroggins: When I was living at home, I never once heard my parents use any swear word — or “crude language” as they called it. Oddly, this practice may have had something to do with my early sense of the secret power of words. Once when my sister was about eleven or twelve, and I was two years younger, I heard her day “shit.” Out of habit I said “Don’t say that,” and she said “Why not? Nothing happens.” I realized she was right and we both laughed, then spilled out a string of bad words that would have made a sailor blush. What a freeing moment that was. I realized that the language of transgression apparently went unnoticed by the cosmos — no earthquakes, no sudden clouds moving to cover the sun. [...]

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