Clean Up My Act

Painted Papier Mache mask by Tomasito, 2008

Little Joe Helps Clean Up My Act

This may sound strange or even impossible to modern people like you but when we were growing up, no-one in my family ever swore—that is, used swear words––at all.

Now I live in an apartment in a working class neighborhood and I am sometimes a little bit shocked to hear the language the neighbors shout all day and night at each other.

Even the very young children around here, who learn from their parents, of course––yell foul words at each other.

But I can honestly say I never heard either my father or my mother use a “bad” word. Neither when I was a child nor when I grew up.

Such language simply did not exist for them.

About as uncouth as they could be was “darn”—but I really don’t even remember them even using that word—though we kids did of course.

In those primitive days all male US citizens had to serve a period of time in the service. (Sounds terribly old fashioned doesn’t it?)

I joined the Navy Reserve and had to show up to the Great Lakes Training Center near Chicago and a year later had to show up for a two week cruise from New Orleans. These periods of training were interesting enough for a young fool like me, but I found out quite early that I was suffering from a serious linguistic handicap.

I didn’t swear.

Everything in the Navy was a f***ing this or a f***ing that. And of course all trash was s***, and all waste cans were s*** cans. Etc.

I was not a language purist for moral reasons––foul language was just not my habit.

It took me just a little while and soon I was saying “F***ing s*** !” with the worst of them.

I spent my two years of active duty in Hawaii and when I got out I stayed there––it was about the nicest place I had ever been.

I played rock n roll in the dives on Hotel Street until I graduated from UH and then I taught English at junior and senior high schools.

I gradually lost my swearing ability since it was not needed in the night clubs or in the classrooms, but than I got a teaching position at the brand new Leeward Community College campus of UH.

For some unknown reason, maybe because it was the “seventies” with all the Viet Nam protests and the black power enthusiasms, but all the cool students swore like sailors.

I wanted to be accepted as a cool instructor, so I used the old familiar ripe language from my old Navy days right along with the worst of them.

And I was cool.

Fast forward a few years and I am working on the ski lift at Lassen.

I am a little older than the other laborers but I am as cool as any of them I think. Some of them swear and some of them don’t but I trot out my swearing vocabulary and it’s f***ing this and so forth per the good old days.

One day I am working with a gang that includes young Joe and I am using my best bad language when he casually says to me: “Didn’t you say you used to be an English Teacher?”

His remark absolutely stopped my train.

It shamed me to my shoes.

I remembered myself all the way back to my father’s knee and I was shamed, ashamed and embarrassed.

I stopped my swearing right then and now I am a lot more careful of other people’s ears when I speak.

Tomasito, 2008

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