I Swear

I Swear

A few weeks ago, I went to talk to my son’s sixth grade class about my new book, and what it was like to write it. After, I asked my son to critique my presentation.

“It was good. Except you said the word ‘damn.’ You said it, like, three times. I could tell the principal didn’t like it. She frowned. You know she’s very proper.”

“Really? I didn’t even notice it. But let’s face it honey, we both know it’s lucky I didn’t drop the F-bomb.”

My son shrugged. “That’s true.”

I admit it. I have a potty mouth. I didn’t always have a mouth like a sailor/truck driver/French whore/insert your profession of choice here. It’s not like when my children were young, I’d say things like, “Aren’t you a sweet, little, f*****g baby! Oh, look! You s**t your diaper!” In fact, growing up, I never cursed.

“Profanity is a sign of a limited vocabulary,” my mother used to say. And for a long time I believed her.

Then I grew up. And I realized that sometimes a well chosen swear word is the ONLY vocabulary word that will do.

As an adult, I tried to keep my obscenities in check, not wanting to seem overly vulgar. And mostly I managed. In fact, when my children were babies, not only did I refrain from cursing but even words like dumb, stupid, or ugly were considered “bad” words in our house.

“He’s stupid,” my toddler would utter.

“No, honey! Don’t say ‘stupid.’ It’s not nice,” I would gently reprimand.

However, at some point my kids came to the same realization that I did as an adult.

“He’s stupid,” my child would say.

“Now honey . . .”

“No, Mom, he is stupid. He was going to drink an entire bottle of hot sauce.”

And he was right. The kid WAS stupid. Really f*****g stupid. Thus proving that sometimes even “bad” words are necessary.

I’ve also realized that, as my children have aged, my profanity usage has increased in direct proportion to their willful disobedience. At this rate, by the time they are teenagers, I will have probably invented some new expletives. I’m not particularly proud that I curse around, or sometimes even AT my children. But sometimes it’s necessary. Sometimes an obscenity is the shortest distance between two points.

One time my older son did something to my younger son. Something intentional and not particularly nice. “You know what that was?” I scolded him. “That was a d**k move.” It was the best way I knew how to describe it.

Of course, the fall out of this is that occasionally my children follow my lead, and I have to chide them to watch their mouth. Unfortunately, in this case the idiom, “Do as I say, not as I do,” doesn’t really work. So I have to gently admonish them. And if that doesn’t work, I simply tell them to watch their f*****g language.

Christina Surretsky wanted to be Wonder Woman, Princess Leia or one of Charlie’s Angels when she grew up. However, after the realization that none of these would pan out, she decided to pursue a career in advertising, and then moved on to a gig as a mother (a field in which she currently still dabbles). Eventually she heard the siren’s call of the pen (or, really, computer) and began writing. A freelance writer and blogger, she recently released her debut novel Divine Bloodlines. Besides writing, she is an avid local volunteer, a lover of good (and some would say bad) books, a yoga enthusiast and a student of the art of sarcasm. She resides in New Jersey with her husband and two sons. She can be found on Twitter (@ChrisSurretsky), Facebook, and at Christina Surretsky.