I Swear

I was engaged in a conversation over the weekend about swearing, which, I confess, I have partaken of most of my life (bad language, I mean, not conversation, although both things have been prevalent throughout) (except for the five years I lived in my father’s house). My youngest child, in fact, used to call me Sailor Mouth, although I think this nickname was more a product of his romantic notion about mothers who were also bartenders than it was about anything real.

Mostly, I tried to mind what I said around my children when they were young, as I do around Lainey, although I think the occasional slip is not harmful as long as young children understand that this is not an appropriate way for people to be speaking unless they mean to be philosophically effective.

And because of this recent/weekend conversation, I have firmly decided that I intend to swear until I die (or until I lose my mind, in which case the choice might be taken away from me). While I do not condone gutter-sniping, I think any word can be the best word in the right setting.

I think now of young (by young, I mean no older than four) Noam, walking down the apartment hallway, accidentally dropping his Tonka trucks and uttering, half under his breath, “Jesus Christ.” I don’t think I ever heard him swear for the purpose of being overheard (at least not by his parents), and I keenly admired his ability to put so succinctly into two words the full thrust of his annoyance.

My mother was also something of a blasphemer, but relegated her use to the same three words: shit, damn and balls. (I never understood which end of whose anatomy the balls referred to, and I never asked.) She was also incredibly polite and did not, within my hearing and knowledge, use foul language out of context (which isn’t exactly correct denotatively, but fits my connotative meaning).

Odd, then, that in my choice of life (life?) partners I have selected two people who almost never drop an s, c, f, d, a, b or m bomb. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I heard Mary swear (although I am fairly certain that were I to guess it would have had something to do with her job, which she loves, but...).

Mind you, Mary is one of those people who suffers deeply from anger issues in that she is almost never and seldom knows how to be angry.  How she hooked up with me is beyond my capacity, given that I can get my dander in an uproar over almost anything (and am so good at it that I feel no need to apologize or even question my – shall we call it – passion).

But Don was a whole other conundrum. Like me, he often found himself thoroughly enraged, and how he held his tongue and minded his language in almost all settings remains way beyond me. (And why I have lapsed into cutesy vernacular is also way beyond what ought to be way beneath me.)

You can imagine my delight, then, to find myself walking toward the churchyard with Don one winter’s afternoon, only a few steps from the bar in which I made my wage. We had been having recent discussions about one of the men with whom I worked – an arrogant guy who was being paid under the table by our boss and collecting unemployment insurance at the same time.

I was telling Don again about how this man persistently treated me poorly (which on the island is euphemistic for “like shit” – let’s not mince words here in an entry about swearing) when, lo and behold, who was approaching us from the opposite direction but Mr. Misogyny himself.

As he moved closer to us I could sense that he was afraid...which is typically how all bullies respond in the face of integrity...and as he walked by, head down, he spoke quietly enough, saying something like, “Good day” or “How are you?” to which Don replied, also quietly (but loudly enough for me to be sure of what I was hearing), “Fuck off.”

Well, you could have knocked me over with a toothpick. I was flabbergasted and, more than that, absolutely thrilled. All those months being treated shabbily by that cocaine-infested fleabag and, in an instant, this other man – this wonderful man who almost never let a filthy word fly out of his mouth – conquering that dickweed with/in two words.

I would have jumped up and down and clapped my hands were I not such a klutz and in danger of falling and breaking my spine. I must have said to Don five times in our short walk home, “Oh my God – you told him to fuck off.” And while it is true that Don was never one to gloat or puff up, I could see the snow reflecting brightly, clearly, in his twinkly brown eyes. Not only had he rid me forever of another thorn in my side, but he had reminded me of an invaluable lesson I had previously learned in writing, applying make-up, humour and, now, bad language:

Less is more.

And if you don’t believe me, try walking through an icy churchyard in Charlottetown and replicating our experience. You will come away with one of life’s invaluable lessons, emerging braver, calmer and better armed. And like many of us who seldom do, you will know what it means to savour.

I swear.