I think if you’ve been reading Happy Trails for any length of time, you’ll know I’m pretty vanilla in both my writing style and subject matter. I basically write stuff that’s suitable for any age to read, which, for the most part, is good advice, if not for any other reason than it’s more marketable. But I’m going out on an editorial limb in this edition and am writing about swear words. I’ll mask them (It’s Halloween soon, after all), but no matter how many of these @#!% I put in, we all know a swear word when we see it.
In short, I think the use of profanities is slovenly. As a writer, I have respect for finding the correct word, and a correct word is rarely a swear. They’re usually too colloquial, too slang, too encompassing to accurately portray what someone really wants to say. And if you’re trying to offend someone with an off-the-cuff swear, take a minute and think about what you actually want to say and sling that at them; it will hit harder. But swears do have their place in our language and culture, and I’m starting to think they need a little respect…a little.
Mostly, swears are funny. Think about Clark Griswold’s meltdown in A Christmas Vacation if it were loaded with “goshes” and “gollies” and “ficks” and “fudges” and “shoots” and “darns” instead of his profanity-laden rant about his stingy, Grinchy, boss. Lame. And if anyone’s worth swearing about, it’s usually a boss.
Also, in my opinion, a swears’ weakness is its strength. You have to respect their versatility.
In college, during a creative writing class, a student used the word S#!T out loud. The teacher paused, noticed, and zeroed in on the student, scrunching her eyes. She said, “Let’s explore that word.”
She closed the classroom door, and for the next twenty minutes, the S#!T really hit the fan. By the end of the discussion, the blackboard was filled with nearly two dozen sentences using the word S#!T, each distinct and different.
Our language is loaded with homonyms and other words that have a dozen different meanings, but I’ve never seen a “clean” word operate on as many levels as a typical swear word, which may hang on our tone, inflection, or context for optimal understanding, but the recipient of the word S#!T (or any of its cousins) hardly misses the drift, making swear words rather universal forms of communication inside our culture.
The seed for this Happy Trails sprouted a couple weeks ago when I was watching a TV show in which a swear word was used expertly. Maybe it was the great acting, the plot of the scene, my intense involvement, or all three, but this one word spoke volumes for the character’s and story’s development. It seemed to sum up everything that was happening, and I thought, Wow, that was perhaps one of the best uses of a swear word I’ve heard.
The writers could have the two characters hash out their feelings in a more descriptive way but who wants to watch a therapy session unfold? At least in this instance, less, blunt, and foul was much, much more.
In our culture, were raised to respect their elders. But when it comes to language and its fleeting and rapidly changing slang, we opt for younger, shorter, faster forms of saying what we want. Smash-and-grab communication. Pick up your grandkid’s cell phone and bring up their last text convo (example of a, as I call them, newmangled spin on an oldie but goodie), and you’ll know what I mean. Frankly, a sentence that reads: LO, U R SO FUNNY IM LMSO when it should say “hello, you are so funny I’m laughing my socks off,” is more offensive than any swear word someone could say to me. But that’s just IMHO (in my humble opinion).
Swear words are among the oldest words in our language, and we could probably learn a thing from them. Take my classroom example from earlier. The etymology of S#!T goes back to around 500 BC (yes, there are older words, but that’s pretty old; older than “website” at least). In fact, even the granddaddy of the them all, the EFF word, has long reaching roots in our verbal timeline. But unlike most other swear words it seems to have been born bad rather than starting out with humble, accurate, beginnings and being colloquialized into modern slang.
When it comes to swear words, what it seems to boil down to is not whether or not they should be used but when to use them. Timing is everything, after all.
I saw a good example of this when I was kid. My friend and I were at a park playing basketball when a guy on the other end of the court came down wrong on his ankle and POP! The sound of a bone breaking was unmistakable. From a safe distance, my friend and I watched as he the guy, who was exploding with cuss words, rolled around in agony while a couple of his friends tried to help. A middle-aged woman walking her dog trotted over, peered down at the injured guy, and said, “Maybe it’s not broken.”
“No, it’s [swear] broken,” he said, “I’ve [swear] broken my [swear] ankle before. I [swear] know a [swear] broken ankle when I [swear] have one.”
She nodded, considering, and said, “I know you’re in pain but do you really have to use such language?”
To which he said, “Yes, I do.”
I agreed. The guy looked miserable and her request for him to control his language seemed more wrong than his swears, which, in my opinion, were warranted.
I read online about a dad trying to teach his kids about swear words, who offered some pretty good advice on the matter. His theory was that when something bad or good happens, like stubbing your toe, failing a test, getting a bill from the IRS for more tax money when you thought you and Uncle Sam were square, or winning the lottery, you’re allowed to let one bad boy rip in punctuation.
He told his kids: “You get one good one.”
