If you’ve hung out with me in real life for more than about 25 seconds, you’ve PROBABLY realised that I like words. I consider myself a decent wordsmith, having been telling stories since I was old enough to babble (ask my mother to tell you about when they used to call me over and say, “Katie – tell me a story.” Seriously, she loves telling people about my innate (and inane!) childhood chatterings!), and I have been obsessed with language since I was a toddler.

When I learned to write, I used to spend hours penning the beginnings of novels. I never could quite finish them (a problem I still have today with about 20 books half-finished on my hard drive), but I loved getting the story ideas out of my cluttered mind and onto a page.  And with this appreciation of the English language came a true curiosity about the complexities of the various words.

Why were certain words off limits? And why were substitutions with the same meaning okay?

My parents were both in the Air Force, and we all know how those military folk can be. But their very different upbringings gave them a different attitude toward swearing. My father, raised in a small country town in Pennsylvania was respectful and held his tongue in most social situations. He insisted that children refer to adults as Mister and Missus, and he would never ever dream of swearing in front of a lady or a child. While I did hear him curse from time to time, for the most part, it was only in the most extreme situation. By the time I was five, he was working in the US Border Patrol and used Spanish in his job. So for my adolescence, he would usually try to fool us by swearing En Espanol.

My mother, on the other hand, was raised in a much less inhibited family in California. She had absolutely no qualms about swearing in front of anyone, including her children. At times quite crass, I’m sure she rubbed a few parents the wrong way at times, but I don’t think she let herself be surrounded by anyone who would mind… except of course my father. He definitely had a problem with my mother’s constant abuse of curse words.

But for her children, we grew up knowing that some words were off-limits. At least to us.

When I was eight years old in my elementary school in Texas, I remember having an assignment which asked us each to get a dictionary and look up our favourite words and write out the definitions. I think it was meant as an exercise to practice cursive writing, which we were being taught at the time. I found the words my fellow students looking up rather banal, so I took it upon myself to make the assignment a bit more exciting. I looked up every swear word I knew (and I pretty much knew them all!) and carefully wrote out the definitions on my bit of paper. Other students saw what I was doing, and while excited by my daring, they hissed and whispered that I was gonna be in BIG trouble.

When the teacher came to collect our paperwork, I had a brief moment of doubt about what I’d done… But I told myself that the words were in the dictionary, so they must be okay. In fact, looking up the definitions had really got my mind working about WHY certain words were so wrong.

For instance, “bitch.” Why on earth was a word that meant nothing more than a female dog considered such an off-limits word? It made no sense.  Similarly, words like “damn,” “hell” and “ass” were all in The Bible. And wasn’t The Bible the word of God? Why on earth couldn’t I use a Bible word?

Of course my teacher called my mother in to the class (she worked in the copy room of the school at the time, so she was there every day anyway) and showed her what I’d done. I can’t really remember mom’s reaction, but I certainly remember the overall message which was communicated to me that day: “Stay away from swear words.”

As we grew into our teen years, my mother suddenly got funny about other words. Suddenly besides the normal curse words, we had another list of restricted words. We weren’t allowed to say HATE. Or WHATEVER. Or even SHUT UP. My mom called them “rude words,” and despite her continued use of swears, she got very irate if we used a rude word or phrase.

I spent so much time wondering about this swearing lark that I would often sit in my room or out in the yard by myself saying each word slowly and deliberately and wondering what all the fuss was about. The little thrill I got from saying them out loud was enough to convince me that something was really wrong. Why should any one word fill me with such euphoria just by giving it voice.

I remember when I was around ten years old and hearing one of the local boys shout a very specific word at someone. I locked it away in my mind until one day my brother did something that annoyed me. In front of my dad, I called my 8 year old brother… wait for it… yes, I called him a cunt.

To his credit, my father didn’t go berserk. Had it been anyone else, he probably would have lashed out, but with me, he gave me the benefit of the doubt. Yanking me by the arm and hauling me outside, he was deadly quiet as he asked, “What did you just call him?”

Knowing I’d probably done something very wrong, I mumbled the word again, feeling a sense of doom surround me.

Dad was quiet for a few moments. Then he asked, “Do you know what that word means?”

I shook my head.

“And do you think you ought to be using words you don’t know the meaning of,” he asked me.

“No,” I mumbled with my head down.

“Then promise me you’ll never use a word you don’t know again,” he said.

Of course I promised him. And then I was quiet for a moment before looking up under my eyelashes and querying, “So what does it mean, dad?”

He just shook his head and walked away.

When I turned eighteen, one of the things I looked forward to the most was being able to swear at home. But my mother put the kibosh on that quickly when she said, “Not until you move out from under my roof.”

When I went to college a few months later, I again got excited. I was living in a dorm, therefore I expected on home visits I’d be able to swear. But again, mother said, “You are staying in a dorm, but your mail still comes here. You are living on my dime and you can’t swear.”

Eventually I left college and again lived full time in mom’s house. But this time, she insisted I pay rent. Seeing an opportunity, I finally pushed my advantage. “Okay, ma. I’m paying rent. So I’m not living on your dime. I’m a lodger now. And I get to swear whenever I want.”

She just shrugged at me. A rather anticlimactic victory really.

My curiosity about swearing spilled over into my academic life quite a bit, as my second-grade dictionary escapades attest. But when I was in college, the freedom to express ourselves through writing was intoxicating. I wrote two papers in my Freshman English class. One was inventively titled “Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuckity Fuck Fuck Fuck.” It dealt with the history of the word and its modern usage.  The second was titled “Taking It Back” and dealt with non-swear words that were still controversial. Specifically, it dealt with the words “nigger” and “faggot.” My English professor was a gay black man, so it was an interesting semester.

I still fail to understand why certain words are so offensive.

I hear parents teaching their children to substitute certain words for swears. The two most frequently taught are exchanging “crap” for “shit” and “frick” for “fuck.”

What. The. Hell.

How are either of those substitutions better? They both mean EXACTLY the same thing. EXACTLY.

Crap has no other meaning than as a tamer version of shit. And both of them are just inventive words for poop. How are any of them more polite than others?

And frick is the worst by far. It has no meaning AT ALL other than replacing fuck.

Quite honestly, I could go on and on about the inherent hypocrisy in banning certain words, but at the end of the day, parents have an obligation to teach their child their version of right and wrong. And if society in the majority reckons that these words are not fit for polite company, then who am I to resist?

For my part, I don’t mind if Dexter swears. I will teach him not that certain words are “wrong” or “bad,” but that these words are PERCEIVED in a certain way and should be used with judgement when one is not sure of one’s company.

And NEVER use them in front of Grandpa.

What about you? What are your thoughts on swearing?  I’ve read a couple of posts lately about this, including Mother.Wife.Me and Wit Wit Woo. It seems that people are divided in their opinions, but I am genuinely curious as to reasoning behind it. I don’t usually ask for comments on a blog post, but as I have spent most of my life trying to understand this, I’d REALLY love it people shared…