A Child's View Of Cussing

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

How old were you when you found out that the other kids you hung out with didn’t really invent all those wonderful “dirty words” that were so cool to say? How did it make you feel?

How much cussing education did you receive from your parents or grandparents? Other family members?

What was your earliest source for the best cuss words?

Rate your own cussword vocabulary from 1-10 with 1 being “don’t know many” and 10 meaning “I know them all.”

Do you encourage younger kids to cuss?

Any amusing tales about your own history of cussing you’d like to share?

2

Good thread topic! I love to cuss.

My parents were particularly adept at it as well, especially my father, who used such colorful descriptives as “Shit in the middle of a muddy road” or “A bird in a turd” to describe his emotional state.

In fact, one time, my friend Mary came over to play (ca. 3rd grade) and my father, who was either ill or hungover, emerged from his bedroom to find a smiling little girl (not one of his own) in the living room.

Being well-versed in her Ps and Qs (but not, apparently, in her !@#s and $%&s), she inquired politely as to how my father was doing.

He answered honestly:

“I feel,” he declared, “like a Friday fart on a Saturday morning.”

Mary, in all her 3rd grade wisdom, thought that was the best thing she’d ever heard. She went home and told her parents.

She was not allowed to come back over to my house until we were in high school. :smiley:

Not a cussing tale, per se, but if you’d like, you can substitute the “Friday fart” line with “Shit in the middle of a muddy road”. As I understand it, the meanings are similar. :wink:

3

I still remember the horrored look on my mothers face when I came home and asked her what a dildo was. She told me it was a shower attachment, and when I brought this news back to my 4th grade classmates, they all agreed, proving they didn’t know what it was either. We continued to use that word to insult other kids though, until Steve introduced us to the phrase, “Dueschbag.” That came to an end when the teacher heard Steve refer to her as such.

4

Oh, I love to curse as well. I learned from my dad. It was wonderful in fourth grade when my friend Jared and I were the two most foul-mouthed kids in the entire school.

Currently, being a young man, in the military, and a father, I continue to peel paint off the wall as often as possible.

Yesterday: Big family picnic (my wife’s, not mine). I’m wearing one of my Spongebob shirts, and a little girl, maybe five, looks at me cheerily and laughs in delight, proclaiming, “Spongebob!!!”

I nodded and said, “Damn right.”

Later last night, after many, many hours of grueling “In-Law” time, chasing after my 2-year-old and being generally sweaty and nasty, my wife asks in oppressive optimism, “I had a great time. How do you feel?”

I reply, “Like hammered shit.”

5

I remember being around 11 and somehow getting a wonderful jokebook called “The Cab Driver’s Jokebook.” The jokes were about 50% clean, 25% dirty that I understood, and 25% dirty that I had no idea what they meant until I was older.

I almost had the book taken away when I asked my mom to explain the following:
“Q: What do you get when you cross a computer and a Jewish American Princess?
A: A system that won’t go down!”

I figured since it didn’t have any of the usual dirty words that it would be safe… oops… Her reaction made me refrain from asking what this meant:

“Q: Who had the first computers?
A: Eve had the Apple and Adam had the Wang”

I didn’t get it for at least 5 years. Probably for the best. :slight_smile:

6

Not a cussing story, per se, but amusing nonetheless:

When my little brother was 4, he wandered into the bedroom, where my parents were watching some movie in which the actors were discussing when and where they lost their virginity. One lady said that for her, it was under the bleachers in her high school stadium. At this point, my parents realized that this is Age Inappropriate Material, and switched off the television. Too late. There is a long pause, in which my little brother screws up his face in thought. They just know that the dreaded question is coming, and they are frantically trying to think of how to explain virginity without mentioning sex. After all, they think, 4 years old is much too young for The Talk. Then he speaks:

“Daddy?”
“Yes, son?”
“What are bleachers?”

7

I remember learning the word “dildo”, too, although it was in about 5th or 6th grade, and I didn’t report it to my mom. The kids in question were happily informing anyone who would listen that it meant “rubber penis.”

I considered this to be ridiculous. Why in the world would anyone possibly need a rubber penis?

8

My first encounter with swearing was rather interesting to say the least, and rather psychologically scarring.

I was in first grade and recounting a tale of the previous night’s episode of ‘Martin’. This in its own spells disaster. I was at the height of my story when I told my classmates: "And then he said, ‘I’m gonna kick your a$$!’

This being first grade I was immedeately met with loud ‘Oooohs!’ One girl went and told the teacher that I’d said the ‘A-word’. I just sat there, look for all the world like a puppy with his tail between his legs. What did I do wrong?

My teacher came over and yelled at me, telling me never to cuss again. And I haven’t. The whole thing quite amusing to my friends who constantly try to goad me to swear. :smiley:

9

I learned all the bad words from my paternal grandparents. My grandmother has a vocabulary that would make a sailor blush.

I do remember one evening, though, my mother and I were driving to pick up father from work. Now, I was about two years old. A truck pulled out in front of my mother, and she screamed, “You jackass!”

Ah, thought I, a new word! “Jackass!” little two-year-old Guin yelled.

And my mom smacked me-and I didn’t even know why! I had never heard that word before.

Then there was the time I found out that bitch was a bad word. I was taking a walk with my mom, and just babbling nonsense to myself, just being silly, and out came the sound, “bitch” Well, I liked the sound of it, so I started repeating it, and my mom told me it was a Very Bad Word.

Of course, she also had me convinced that “shut up” was a swear until I was about five.

10

Due to traumatic circumstances, I don’t remember much of my childhood. But I do have a story of early cussing from my oldest daughter. We were driving cross-country when the car overheated. Hubby slams his fist on the steering wheel and says “FUCK!”. 2-yr-old gothiebaby in the back seat starts saying “Pop said ‘fuck’. . .Pop said ‘fuck’” After we got the car fixed, and had traveled some time more, hubby pulls over to the side, and announces he has to go take a piss (we were in the middle of nowhere). He hops the guardrail, and gothie is in the back seat, informing me “Pop went to take a piss”. That was the car trip that convinced hubby he had to clean up his language while driving!

11

My parents were very strict on our speech and I was thus shielded from profanity and “dirty words” for a long time. I recall some slightly older nextdoor neighbor kids showing me this little stick-figure drawing of a boy and girl holding hands, and asking me if I knew what they were doing.

“Holding hands?”

“No, dummy. They’re fucking.”

Then there were all the substitutes for “damn” and “hell” that were as forbidden as the real things. Dang, darn, durn, heck, and the like. Even “Gollee” was frowned on, so my brother and I worked out that we could sneak by with “ahlee.” And we felt we were hot stuff.

Even later in life after I had extended my vocabulary immensely, I was in amazement at how (especially in mixed company) guys would say things like “goddurn” or “goddang.” Struck me as odd at least.

But my favorites were the permutaions of “shit----” that were used to refer to an otherwise disagreeable person. Shithook, dipshit, shithead, and that sort of creativity.

I was most likely in my teens before I ever saw a dictionary with all the good words in it. Learning that our Anglo-Saxon forbears were responsible, centuries ago, for all the nicely expressive terminology I had assumed kids in the neighborhood had just made up, was a true revelation. Those A-S guys were too cool, I recall thinking.

Slightly tangentially, I recently read a book by lyricist Gene Lees where he goes into great depth on how if you want to use words in songs that speak to the heart directly, go with Anglo-Saxon root words; if you want to appeal to the more cerebral and sanitized versions of similar words, go with the French derivatives in English.

Y’all are passing along some fun stories!

12

Someone I worked with had a little 2-year-old daughter. She was one of those sweet, totally angelic-looking children. It was potty-training time. One bedtime, he told her, “Come on, Susie, time to go to bed. Let’s go potty.” “Don’t wanna use the potty.” “Yes, you do. You don’t want to wet the bed. Come use the potty.” “No.” More cajoling. Little angelic Susie responds, with perfect inflection, “I don’t want to use the fucking potty!”

13

Oh the joys of kids.

We were remodeling our house in 1997, my son who was 2 at the time learned a few words from my husband.

One day, I was at my aunts house with my two kids, aforementioned 2 year old and my newborn daughter. My aunt and uncle had just built this new house, everyone was there helping them move the final things in. My son was playing in the kitchen by the window. He leaned against the screen and the spline ( the black thing that holds the screen in place ) had popped out. My dad picked him up, told him to not touch the screen again. My dad fixed the screen. Not even two minutes later, my son pushed on the screen and did it again. My dad picked him up, swatted him on the bottom and put him on the couch. After 15 minutes of crying hysterically, he calmed down. My grandma asked him something along the lines if he was still mad at my dad, to which he replied, “granddad is a fu*ker”.

My face turned red, my mothers face turned red. This is a word I would never use in front of my grandmother, and here is my little boy saying it.

My grandma, after being shocked for a bit, ( and after my dad was not in ear shot ) agreed with my son.
As for here, my kids know all of the cuss words-- my oldest step-daughter uses them sometimes. Here are my rules for cussing-- only if its used in appropriate context, and not in public so as to embarrass her father. ( I am not embarrassed by much ) and never in school.

14

I distinctly remember reading the novelization of “Beneath The Planet Of The Apes,” at age eight. Towards the end, the astronaut Taylor makes some sort of observation about Dr. Zaius. Didn’t know the word, and it didn’t seem to be in the dictionary.

So I walked into the living room, holding the book, in the middle of a bridge party my mother was throwing, and asked, "Hey, Mom, what’s BASTARD mean?

15

my father’s friend had a habit of saying “goddamn sheetrock hotdog!” when i was a kid since i knew goddamn was bad, and not knowing what the hell sheetrock was. i figured it was bad also. it wasn’t till high school that i realized what sheetrock was and all the times i had thought people were cussing they were just talking about drywall.

16

Not all of the ones I’m going to address where actually cuss words. We referred to them as four-letter words even if that was an incorrect number.

I cannot remember a time when I didn’t know the word damn but I would never have used it because it had to do with condemning someone to hell and because my mother would have beaten me senseless. And I knew that darn was a sort of reasonable substitute.

Then one day I was in my father’s store and I heard him say damn to someone on the phone. What an eye-opener! If my much-loved Daddy could say it, then so could I. Just not around my mother.

I led a very sheltered life and didn’t know what many of the words meant. (I was slapped very hard once when I was about sixteen for saying good grief.)

I did not know the slang word for breaking wind until I was in junior high! I did not know about the f-word until I was in high school and a male cousin explained it to me. Even then, I didn’t fully understand until a married girlfriend explained it to me.

I don’t remember when I learned the s-word. I was told that the word “grunt” was the appropriate noun. I must have been ten or twelve before I knew better. Didn’t even know “poop.” I did know doo-doo from having a dog.

I was mortified in class if I had to read aloud in class and had to say the word breast. Even chest was uncomfortable. The worst word to say was administration because it sounded so much like menstruation. I didn’t know how to pronouce menstruation correctly until I was twenty-five.

I didn’t really learn how valuable cuss words could be until I stumped my toe in the night and actually said, “Damn it!” instead of “Awwwh!” My toe felt immediately better. Since then I have learned even better words to say and my toes barely hurt anymore at all.

I was probably in my twenties before I heard the c-word and its companion p***y.

At twenty-six I started teaching high school and learned quickly. I was a 10 by the end of my first day.

Most of my transformation took place between the years 1949 and 1969 in a rural small town. That’s why some of this sounds so totally absurd.

17

And now a word from the other side of reality…

I swear… and do quite colorfully when sufficiantly angered.
One day, I forget what was making me so pissed but, I was letting out a loooong stream of descriptive words…when my 7 yr old yelled at me from the nearby couch.

“Mommy, you don’t sposed to swear!”

I gnored him and continued my tantrum. Suddenly he appeared right in front of me.

**“MOMMY! ** You don’t sposed to SWEAR!” And from there he chewed my ass every bit as well as my Mother ever did when I was a teen. He was VERY serious and very firm and didn’t use a single swear word.

I just stared at him in shock for about a minute then collapsed into a fit of giggles.

18

I was three years old when I first remember hearing my dad say the word “dammit!” I knew it was a word he used when something angered him. When I dropped my Lego toy and it came apart on the floor I blurted out a “dammit!” of my own. My mom told me that this was a grown-up’s word and not to use it.

When I was four I thought I had made up my own word when I went around my babysitter’s house saying “shet” for no apparent reason, just that I thought my own made-up word sounded funny. My babysitter, heard it as “shit”, and she told me not to say this word. I had no idea what was wrong with this word that I thought I had made up on my own.

When I was five or six I was walking through an alley with my sister. I saw the word FUCK scrawled on a wall and I read it aloud. My sister told me that this was a bad word.

From that point on I learned that swearing was something very bad that could get me in trouble. I saw my friends get in trouble by their parents for swearing, and kids got in trouble for saying these words in school, so I became very fearful of using such words, lest I be punished. I was even afraid to use substitute words. This fear extended to the point I was afraid to even talk about going to the bathroom. “Pee” and “poop”, I thought, were bad words. I was 14 or 15 before I finally let go of these fears and began using such words. Even to this day, though, mostly out of respect, I never use profanity in the presence of my family.

19

When I was little, I went out of my way not to use bad language. I considered it more important to expand my vocabulary to sound smart, not to be shocking. I took it to such an extreme that one at least one occasion I referred to hair detergent as “sham-big-pottie.” (Think about it.)

I remember the first time I decided to curse to have an effect. It was in fourth grade. One of my classmates — we’ll call him Steve — was being a jerk. I distinctly remember thinking: Okay, I’m going to try swearing now. So I balled up my fists, took a deep breath, and said, as angrily as I could, “GOD, Steve!”

I was surprised when it didn’t really have the desired effect. :rolleyes:

Now, of course, I’m as foul-mouthed as can be. However, I don’t do it gratuitously; I’m still pretty careful about choosing my language for a specific effect. Read my infamous telemarketer post, for example. Liberally dosed with profanity, but carefully chosen and placed for maximum damage.

On the scale of one to ten, before I came to the Dope, I would have called myself a nine, reasoning that while there was always room for improvement, I was near the top of the scale creativity-wise. It wasn’t just indiscriminate shit this, casual fuck that. Now, however, I know better: I’d score myself a seven. To name but one example, jarbaby and her fuckhammers have taught me a thing or twelve.

20

My Mom used to try to get little kids to say stuff like “shit” or “damn”. However, that was about the extent of her cussing. I went to Catholic school, so cussing was a pretty serious thing. A boy became a hero in fifth grade because he said “damn it” after he struck out at baseball and I myself had to apologize to the class for telling a classmate to “go to Hell” (I didn’t have to apologize to the boy who had made me mad because the teacher knew he must have been really bugging me to make me yell at him in class–ah, the joys of gender bias (girl yells at boy, must be boy’s fault, not the sweet innocent girl’s–this also worked in my favor during the years I was getting into fistfights with boys–it was always the boys fault).