Smart Mouth
When I was a little girl I loved helping my Dad fix things around the house. The tool box came out, I came running. I knew all the tool names and if I didn’t know I made them up. Like a nurse in an operating room; when a tool was called it was my job to slap it into Dad’s hand, handle in – mechanics out, ready for business. As long as the job was going smoothly my presence and help was welcome. The moment things started going south my Dad would send me to hang out with my Mother. As I got older I came to understand that he was protecting my little ears from a barrage of profanity, my Dad was the best at it! I overheard him once and could not believe the colourful string of emphatic, dramatic, punctuated, explicative words that flowed from his mouth; like Longfellow meets Eminem. I was impressed and could hardly wait to be that grown up. I also knew that no matter how old I grew up to be, if my Dad ever heard me using such language that was exactly how old I was going to live to be.
It never fails to leave me in total shock when I hear kids swearing. Teenagers yes, I half expect that out of earshot and beyond my reach there is some experimentation with expression taking place (I could have given Eminem a good run for his money myself in my prime adolescent years). But little kids? I mean little kids! Last week a seven year old, in the course of a normal conversation, said to me “….that guy just PI**ED me off, so I rammed him right into the EFFIN……” I must have been busy picking my jaw up off of the ground because I missed the rest of the story, I’m not sure how it ended, I got as far as the first ‘F-bomb’ and I was mentally running for my bar of soap, or is it hot sauce now? maybe it is tactical ‘I’ messages and rational conversation. It doesn’t matter, whatever the appropriate response was I was rendered incapable of action, comment or response. I was dumfounded!
Language I understand is becoming ever more accepted and overlooked, I get that and hear it when the kids are playing out on the street, the most outrageous words fly from the smallest of mouths and are greeted in retort by stronger more vulgar words. Words they do not even possess the exposure or maturity to comprehend the meaning of. Words that I would be embarrassed to use myself. Words I could not believe my ears to hear a seven year old saying to a grown up just like please and thank you.
Have we come to this? What an amazing display of people willing to take the easy road. There are More than 247,000 words in the English language and our kids are falling back on a mitt-full of four letter ones to make their point? The same ones we used growing up, the same ones our parents used but didn’t want us to hear growing up. Does that show a lack of creativity, a lack of intelligence or a lack of caring? Are we evolving in all other aspects of life except creative expression and ‘Pi**off-ed-ness’?
If we told our kids that swearing is a sign of small intelligence could we encourage them to think outside of the box? There are so many fabulous words we could be using to achieve the upper-hand in any given situation and the beauty is that because mostly we are only using the four letter easy words, there are even more to choose from. If you throw out the word ‘fastidious’ in the middle of a debate, you are going to win; by default if not by wit…nobody knows what ‘fastidious’ means anymore. (Troglodyte was a good word we used to use as an example in our house for a while but I looked it up, it has a new Urban Dictionary meaning now, the example is no longer great – don’t use it.)
Evidently as demonstrated by the word (or words) on the street lately and given my recent encounter with a very colourful seven year old, the profanity train is not about to derail. I’m guilty myself on occasion of blurting them out and I am not nearly as diligent as my father was with sending my kids out of the room before it happens. I think however we are going to begin posting “big words to stump your small minded friends and end an argument” on our chalkboard in our house. Maybe we can start a trend whereby the next generation will end up using words like reprehensible, incorrigible, and unregenerate.
Something’s got to give. We either have to stand up and be part of the solution or prepare for our grand-kids to high-five us as they rocket through the door and lay a ‘How the F*** are ya Gran?” on us. If that happens I’m going to need an extra set of pacemaker batteries and a tanker of red wine.
You can also find Michelle at her blog The Space Between Raindrops, sharing wisdom, gratitude and humour.
