For the record, Elysha and I don’t swear very often at all.
As elementary school teachers, we avoid swearing unless we are in the company of colleagues at a safe distance from children, but we also don’t swear very much in our nonworking life, either.
You won’t find many curse words in my novels. You won’t find a single swear in the 6,423 posts on this blog.
Even onstage, I don’t swear a lot, and when I do, it’s often repeated dialogue or stated for a specific purpose.
I made a point of never allowing my mother to hear me swear even once.
We just aren’t people who swear with regularity.
That said, I don’t mind swearing one bit. I don’t judge people who swear often, and I hate when words are assigned more power than they deserve. With the exception of hate speech, I’m actually opposed to any word being considered so offensive that it can’t be spoken in any setting. I think it’s ridiculous that so many of our swears are related to the human anatomy and sex.
I may not swear often, but I have no problem with people who swear often.
My son, Charlie, thinks differently. Charlie despises swearing. When asked why, he said that he considers swearing disrespectful. Even though his parents almost never swear, he takes great offense at words as mild as “damn” and “hell.”
Yesterday, in response to my use of words like “damn” and “hell” (and the occasional swear), Charlie instituted a swear jar in our home.
25 cents per swear.
So far I have put $1.00 in the swear jar. He and Clara overheard me say “damn” three times yesterday evening while consulting with a client.
As they gleefully laughed about my loss of 75 cents, I said, “Oh yeah? I don’t give a damn!”
It was worth the quarter to watch them collapse in a combination fo laugher and demands for money.
