Cuss and cash in
My wife Marsha and I have an unbreakable love affair — with swearing. And 2020 was our year. And yeah, big deal, lots of people swear. But we are using our swear jars for a downpayment on a summer home in Sedona. That’s how much we swear.
There once was a TV show and the host would ask celebrity guests their favorite swear words. It was my favorite part. When I worked the desk at a suburban Chicago newspaper, our gang on one slow news night brought up the topic and fessed up. One colleague was fairly new and had been quiet and even timid. Almost like a cute kitten. When it came to her turn she didn’t hesitate, “Oh, it’s motherfucker,” she meowed. And with that that cat was out of the bag. None of this little meowing anymore. Now it was motherfucker this and motherfucker that.
My oldest sister isn’t anything like that. She never swears. You’d think her being a lifelong Cubs fan and an ex-Republican living in Trumplandia would be enough for a slip-up, but she doesn’t. She just doesn’t.
I make up for it. Let’s face it, I’ve tripped and slipped, have been jabbed, stabbed, nicked, pricked, and poked; I’ve stubbed my toe, banged my knee, had things fall on my feet and my head. I’ve fractured bones, including my skull. I’ve hammered my thumb, stapled my finger, sliced the tips off my right thumb and both index fingers. I even gave myself the sign of the Manson family when I (don’t ask) embedded the claw end of a hammer right between my eyes. Not once did I miss the chance to let the shouting-distance world know just how I felt.
You know, if you roll it up just right, asshole-motherfucker fits neatly into the glove box. I take it out to use when I’m driving. It’s perfect, especially over the holidays.
Most of my swearing I learned in my youth from an older kid named J.B. He was the only kid I ever knew who went by his initials. That was cool all by itself, and it’s hard to be cool when your weight is around 300 pounds, in 6th grade, but he was. He was to swearing as Ellington and Einstein were to physics and jazz — entertaining and educational. I discovered swearing could be for good and bad occasions, like if a fish got away, or a sure homer hooked foul, or you run the table at the pool hall. It’s important for a kid to know and master these things. You didn’t want to overdo it, but you didn’t want to underdo it either. It couldn’t come out sounding lame.
There’s no E for effort, you stupid motherfucker.
My favorite is the one I’ve surely used the longest: Son of a bitch. It’s lovely in almost all of its many applications. It can be percussive “SONOFABITCH!” Or even chromatic, going up or maybe down the scale of musical tones with each word. It can be rhythmic, using a combination of quarter note, half note and whole notes. Sonnnn of a bitch. Son of AAAAA bitch. Or a halting stocato: son, of, a, bitch.
My guess is I learned it from my mom. Besides raising the four kids she had, mostly by herself on the farm while my firefighter dad was away, my mom made extra money reupholstering furniture. Her dominant right hand had been mangled in a farming accident as a teen, including losing most of her thumb, and she’d have a hard time wielding a tack hammer and whacking in the hundreds of tacks in the stuffed chairs she’d be working on. She’d fumble the tacks once in a while and of course they’d roll away beneath something and out it’d come. “Son of a bitch,” she’d mutter. Then she’d unmutter, “You kids play outside.” Dad bought her a magnetic hammer so the tacks wouldn’t roll away so much and the house was finally more peaceful, aside from the hammering.
My wife learned the new four-letter word that’s been sweeping the nation. ZOOM. Marsha, after 35 years in the sales biz, can handle any situation involving humans. But her head-to-head, three-point stance standoffs with ZOOM and other techno impositions and frustrations has her filling that jar faster than I can empty it. It sucks, for her. But on the bright side, we have a place in Sedona now.
