Life Change #3: I Swear (way) Too Much

Shit. This is gonna be hard. Really hard.

OK…I can measure exercise (did I, or did I not, exercise?), I can measure water consumption (1 2, or 7 glasses of water drank today—I can count), but swearing….yikes, this will be a challenge. But it has to be done…aside from my weight, nothing gets more commentary from my wife and daughter, neither of whom swears so far as I know.

This life change will be difficult because there are certainly times when swearing seems to be the right thing, at least in my mind. I mean, if you stub your toe….what are you going to do if you cannot curse? On the other hand, these are after all just words….can "God damn it" be easily substituted with "gosh darn"….not sure, but I can try. I will try. This is a life changing experience, after all.

I think part of the problem is that I am a sponge, especially when it comes to words and language… and I note that swearing has become almost a cottage industry in many movies and various comedians cannot utter a sentence with out dropping the F-bomb. It seems as if some folks get paid per f-bomb they drop, hence they drop it an awful lot. In fact, some times the words themselves are intended to make the joke funny. Thanks Lenny.

When I sit up late and watch “The Daily Show”…they simply silence the swear words, but they are still in the script…if anything, this calls MORE attention to the words. Perhaps John Stewart says “Karl ‘fucking’ Rove” while what you hear is “Karl –pause for silence—Rove” as he clearly mouths the word “fucking”--the impact, seems to me anyway, funnier than if he simply said it out loud…everyone watching the show knows what he said, and no one would be the least bit offended had the word not been censored out, but they have found a way to actually make it funnier, by calling attention to it, BECAUSE it has been excised from the soundtrack. Like spraying orange paint on a scratch or dent on your car (assuming of course, you don’t drive an orange car).

I opted to deal with this bad habit early in my personal journey so I would not be inclined to use profanity in later writings….I can easily see that tackling some bad habits (“I drink too much Coffee” or “I eat too much sugar”) might cause me to swear simply on principle alone…and in truth, as much as curse words flow out of my mouth, I almost never enjoy reading them in print. Somehow it seems when writing…when afforded with the time to select the right word, then it should almost never be ‘shit’ or even ‘crap’ (which is NOT a curse word, but seems to lack grace anyway)…sometimes those are the right words, but at some level it seems lazy. When speaking however, there is often not time to find the right word. You are driving along and someone cuts you off, causing you to swerve and spill that hot bucket of Starbucks all over your shirt. It hurts. If it makes your lap, it hurts a lot. Your clothes are a mess (and quite possibly ruined) and now you need to stop and get more coffee. This merits AT LEAST a “God Damn it!” and more likely a string of expletives. And the finger. Definitely the finger.

I will have to search inside myself to see if I consider the”finger” a bad habit or not. It is such a personal act…most of the time the “other guy” does not even see it given to him. On the other hand, if he does, it may precipitate a much worse confrontation…but is it the same as swearing, or a bad habit all its own? My sister had wanted to purchase a bumper sticker she saw that she thought appropriate…”Horn Broken…Watch for Middle Finger”. I suppose if she has that impression, perhaps it is a habit I need to break. OK, for now, no “finger” either…such a shame…just saying “flip ‘em the bird” has such a poetic lilt to it. I’ll miss this more than the words, I suspect.

This is also a relative issue…..some words that might be offensive to some would be wholly reasonable to others. I guess I am speaking of words that they would bleep out on TV….”tit” and “fart” are both harmless, even though they might not be able to say them on Letterman. I do not use them enough to matter, and frankly when I do, it is completely in context. “Tit” seems at least as cute and harmless as “boob”, and the alternatives to “fart” (pass gas, flatulence, etc) are simply laughably contrived…a fart is a fart folks…get over it. “Ass” is not a swear word…it is part of the body or a smallish horse…and actually, I think the word “butt” is funnier than “ass”, and no one considers “butt” a swear word. Hell is a location, if not in fact, at least in mythology. “Dick” and “cock” are a little rougher, and though I use “dick” as in “that guy is a dick” or even “I caught my dick in the zipper again, and so I am on the shelf for a few days”--can’t really use any other word in that situation. I pretty much never use the word “cock”, and I have no explanation for why that would be…but besides, it is also a rooster…I think John Stewart can say “dick” on TV…so that will be the bar we set….if he can say it on the Daily Show, it is not a swear word, and therefore, I can use it. I think we are really talking about 3 words and/or expressions: “fuck”, “shit” and “God damn” and all their related modified states (i.e.: motherfucker)

So…in giving up swear words, I need to be fair to myself. It will not happen overnight…there will be slip ups. (Again, I am not running marathons yet, even though I have begun exercising…baby steps people, baby steps!) And, there will be occasions that it is totally necessary. For instance…the word “shit”, when preceded by the word “dog” creates a noun that is part of the language with no reasonable alternative. If I observe dog shit on the lawn, that is a fair use of the word. I have never been fond of the expression “dog crap”…seems somehow harder to say and crap is much better as a verb…as in “that dog crapped on our lawn” Dog poop seems juvenile, dog scat seems too scientific, dog mess too British, dog stuff too constipated. So, until I can be convinced otherwise, “shit” is still fair game if it sits on the lawn.

‘Shit’ also makes a wonderful descriptor of a gathering of debris, usually personal, in a place it ought not to be…as in “can you get all your shit off the dining table so we can eat dinner?” Somehow, “can you get your pile of books and math homework off the dining table so we can eat dinner” lacks urgency and emphasis. ‘Shit’ is your stuff that I have no regard or need for….it is important only to you, and now it is in my way. And I cannot think of a better single word that describes that circumstance, and around my house that circumstance is all over the place…yep, there is shit all over my house.

And of course, there is no word that deals more eloquently with the matter of the unflushed toilet. OK…I know there are other words…stool, feces, bowel movement, defecation…even crap…but give me a break….this is not a clinic or laboratory…it is my house…if you do not flush the toilet, there is shit in it…simple as that. Of course, if the toilet always got flushed, we would not have to have this discussion.

Shit will be a difficult word to stop using…but I will try not to use it casually, and will only use it in the descriptive sense where it is appropriate and proper. Fuck is a different matter. It seems to be a universal word—really THE universal word…used as a modifier, (you’re fucking kidding me), a noun (get the fuck out of here), surely a verb (don’t fuck with me!)... and as an expression of confusion (what the fuck is that?)...but it is also a word that simply occupies space in simple sentences….(“I fuckin’ hated that fuck of a movie”, or “fuck if I fuckin’ know”)…and NONE of these uses are really descriptive of the actually meaning of the word….describing the sex act seems to be the last possible use of the word nowadays, and it is never used when there is any true love or feeling involved…”can you believe that John is fucking Sheila?” is not nearly the same as “can you believe that John slept with Sheila?”, or the far more hopeful “can you believe that John and Sheila are hooking up?”.

Fuck is also still the shock word of choice, which is odd since it gets used so generically and without regard to its intended or really any meaning. “Fuck you!” still carries a fair amount of weight when uttered directly and with little modification. It seems to get used casually, indiscriminately, and then suddenly it emerges as a resonant word filled with meaning—usually anger or confrontation. A word for all seasons, a word for all reasons. A powerful word that seems to offend 50% of the population, while it rolls easily and frequently off the tongue of the other 50%. It is divisive. It is a Blue State word, in a Red State World. Oddly, it seems I use it most when discussing our highest ranking Red State politician.

I have noted that as we grow more used to hearing this word, it seems to need to be used more in order to create the same shock value….Generation Y and Z (by the way, who comes after Z? Do we start at A again?) today seem to use the word more than they should (perhaps THEY should give up this habit…right along with me)…in fact, if you eliminated the following words from their lexicon, it would be hard for some to have a conversation at all: fuck, like, uhh, nope, whatever, party, chill, and dude.

But I will give up the word “fuck”….no more “f-bomb” for me…I will limit my use of the word “shit” to appropriate circumstances and context. “God damn” seems almost quaint when measured against other words, but it is offensive to some and surely there are alternatives that I can use. When I slip up, I will try to apologize to whomever hears me. (assuming there is someone present---I sometimes swear at inanimate things! In fact, this will help me with a future life change as well (Life Change #34: I have trouble apologizing).


Update on Previous Life Changes (Day Three):

Seems an odd side effect, but even after increasing my water intake for just one day (Life Change #2: I Don’t Drink Enough Water), I cannot help but feel like I am a bit more thirsty…that’s OK…that should make it even easier to get my quota in today. Disaster struck on the exercise front…yesterday’s dead I pod battery morphed into a dead I pod…I still managed to get in my whopping 32 minutes on the elliptical trainer, but I suffered with out the music…Life Change #3B…I NEED A NEW IPOD!!!