Mama-Come-Lately

Ah, shit.

One of my biggest parenting challenges has been putting the lid on swearing when my kid is around. I was older than average when I had him, and pretty set in my ways, and not to blame my parents or anything but my dad was also fond of swearing. So maybe it’s hereditary. Or maybe I just don’t see what the big deal is.

See, to me, with a few exceptions for words that are overloaded with cultural nastiness, words are just words. Their job is to help us express ourselves. And swear words, curse words, cuss words, whatever you want to call them, are just nifty little options in our verbal paintbox.

I’ve always admired Will Smith for keeping his work “clean,” and I get why he does that, I think, but that is not my path in life. Which is not to say that I walk around dropping F-bombs constantly either. I’m somewhere in the middle, with a reasonable level of social sensitivity, though I have been known to say “crap” and “BS” at work.

One of my personal favorites (and what I say in front of my six-year-old every now and then, usually when I’m trying to get us out the door in the morning) is “shit.” Sometimes I substitute “sugar” if I’m in public, or the German “Scheisse,” although once I did that in the middle of Target and apparently the people with me in the cookie aisle understood German because HOLY SHIT did that mom give me a sour-ass look. Which just made me laugh really hard once they’d walked away.

See? Swear words are the gateway to fun!