Warning: The following essay contains language of a frank and explicit nature. The reader is encouraged to read out loud.

Why do we swear? I’m sorry. Why do we flipping swear? There are as many reasons as there are swear words. And believe me, there are a shipload of swear words. So let us start at the beginning when everything was dark.

The best reason to swear is the oldest. Swearing to relieve stress started in the bible: God forgetting to pay the electric bill; wife taking advice from a snake; brother killing brother; farmer Job losing his land, his family and controlling interest in Microsoft. Even Noah had his share of woes. You think it was fun building a wooden boat the size of an aircraft carrier? You had to believe Noah let out a swear word every time an OSHA inspector paid a visit.

OSHA: Not good…

NOAH: What the frack now?

OSHA: This ladder. Do you really use it to get to the upper deck?

NOAH: What’s wrong with it?

OSHA: Not up to code. Will not support the weight of one hungry hippo.

NOAH: Fuuuuuuudge!

OSHA: Where are the bathrooms on this level?

NOAH: Why are you even here? I’m building this on my own with my – Was it one of my sons? Did one of my sons complain?

OSHA: I can’t –

NOAH: Was it Shem? Was it that deadbeat?

OSHA: Again I –

NOAH: It was Ham. Wasn’t it? That bleating goat.

I do not swear (much), but there is a place where I cuss all the time: in my car in traffic. If it’s an open road, what’s the point? But if I’m in a long line of snarled traffic, let the profanity reign. Why not? No one can hear me call the person in front of me a $%&, even though the person isn’t a $%& for being in front of me. After all, the whole point of swearing isn’t to be accurate. It is to relieve stress.

Growing up, I don’t remember my parents swearing. I know my dad wanted to. You could see it in his eyes whenever the phone rang on a Saturday morning, which meant one thing. Work! If ever a project deadline got moved up, he did not swear. Even when he accidentally sunk the company van into a muddy pit at a survey site, still he didn’t utter one filthy word. Even when the front end of the van started to ooze into the mud, even at that moment, when he had a perfectly good reason to let a blue streak run from here ————— to ——————– here, still he did not swear because he had two sons in the van with him.

I still remember being in that van, sitting in the back seat, watching the front end slowly tilt, seeing in the rearview mirror Dad’s lips curling with a nasty desire to spew some volcanic ash. You could see it. It was down there churning in his stomach ready to explode until “SON-OF-A-BISCUIT” belched out.

That was it, my first exposure to profanity.  And for some reason it made me hungry.

Swearing cannot only help alleviate stress. It can also help endure pain. Take this study that found participants could last longer with their hand in a pool of ice water if allowed to swear.

Really? They found enough people to stick their hands in a bucket of frozen water in the name of science? Are there more tests that highlight this line of masochistic research:

I. Studies found that participants were able to receive fifty more stings when allowed to swear at the bees.

II. Studies found that financial advisors were able to lose 15% more of their client’s capital in a downcycle if allowed to scream: “(Bleep) me! (Bleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep!)”

III. Studies found that teachers took three less personal days when allowed to swear when grading their students’ term papers. Example: “No, George Washington Carver did not invent the f-ing peanut. He wasn’t a (blanking) wizard. He was a GD scientist, which is something you will never be.”

 

“Well I hope it don’t rain until after I kill those d*mn mice.” He looked over his shoulder to see whether Billy had noticed the mature profanity.

John Steinbeck
The Red Pony

 

The first swear word I ever heard was at school. I was in first grade and the Carter Administration just moved into the White House. But if you were on the playground you would have heard my schoolmate, Gon, say over and over, “Jimmy Farter! Jimmy Farter! Farter! Farter! Farter!”

The word hit me like ripe grapefruit. Never had I heard such filth. Farter!

I blame Gon’s dad. His father was a neurosurgeon, and besides auto mechanics, construction workers, dishwashers, police officers, rear admirals, army grunts, substitute teachers and Mennonite farmers there is no other profession that has more on-the-job swearing. Gon must have heard the F-bomb and the Holy-S every time his dad misplaced his car keys. Gon probably didn’t even know his profanity laced tirade was wrong, but I did. So I stepped away, not only to escape his vile chant, but to avoid the crush of Secret Service Agents moving in.

Surprisingly, I was an adult the first time I heard my mom utter a swear word. We were in her laundry room, folding clothes, perhaps my own. And in the quiet surroundings of a rinse cycle she made a confession.

MOM: Sometimes, your father is such an ass.

ME: A real jackass?

MOM: Watch your mouth?

 

SCENE FROM A NOSTALGIC MOVIE

THE OLD MAN: Oh, for cripes sake, open up the damper will ya? Who the hell turned it all the way down? AGAIN! Oh, blast it! Poop flirt, rattle crap, camel flirt! You blunder frattle beak struckle brat! Of a womp sack butt bottom fodder…

ADULT RAPHIE: [narrating] In the heat of battle my father wove a tapestry of obscenities that as far as we know is still hanging in space over Lake Michigan.

 

Why did parents use a bar of soap to punish a child for swearing? It happened to Ralphie in A Christmas Story when he dropped the F-bomb while helping his old man replace a flat tire. It even happened to me.

I still remember the moment: the rush of warm water; the splash against the sink; the faint whiff of bleach; my mom’s hand clenched to the back of my neck; my mouth being pushed further and further into a bar of Ivory soap; the taste, that filthy clean taste meant to cleanse my mouth from the noxious fumes I spewed moments before. I remember it all. What I don’t remember was the swear word. Was it Farter? Was it Jimmy F-ing Farter?

 

Why do I, a fairly educated sort of swine, take such unseemly pleasure in guttural utterances of my largely uneducated, foul-mouthed crews? Why over the years, have my own language skills become so crude and offensive that at family Christmas I have to struggle to not say, “Pass the f*ckin’ turkey c*ck s*cker?”

Anthony Bourdain
Kitchen Confidential

 

I never remember my sister, Lisa, swearing (much). Then one day she couldn’t stop. What changed? She started remodeling.

A construction zone is the perfect environment for profanity. Sure, the F and the S helped lower the stress, but there was something more. Lisa has always had the ability to adapt to her surroundings. And in the mist of sawdust and paint fumes, she swore like a foreman at a Brooklyn demo site. Profanity spewed from her lips as if the words had always been there. But as soon as a room was finished, the profanity ceased, packed away with the drop cloths and the paint cans until the next project began.

At the time Lisa’s swearing made sense. In his book Kitchen Confidential Bourdain likened his help to pirates who barely lived within the laws of society. Swashbucklers, scallywags, Bourdain held more affinity with these culinary highwaymen than Julia Child and her Cordon Bleu crew, and swearing was a prerequisite, a test to see who could figure out the most horrible way to insult another cook’s mother, whether in Spanish, Creole, Filipino or the most inarticulate of all, English. And for those who passed the test, they became part of a fraternity, a band of brothers bonded by filth.

 

SCENE FROM A BIRD BATH

ROBIN : Well look what the cat dragged in: if it isn’t a Rough-faced Shag.

WREN: Tough talk coming from a mealy-beaked Drab Seedeater like yourself.

ROBIN: Worms is what the early bird gets you googly-eyed Oxpecker.

WREN: You couldn’t find a worm in a 24-hour bait shop.

ROBIN: Well, aren’t you a Red-necked Grebe!

WREN: Fluffy-backed Tit-Babbler!

ROBIN: Blue-footed Boobie.

WREN: Sapsucker!

ROBIN: Seedeater!

WREN: Suck it up, Sapsucker!

ROBIN: Seed it up, you…. you…

WREN: Ha! Sap! [FLIES AWAY]

ROBIN: Shirke!

 

There was this woman at work. Karlene was her name. She never swore. She also didn’t drink, snort cocaine or dance in the break room. She came to work during the week and went to church on the weekends. That was it.

One day we had a “get-to-know-me” training session and Karleen was asked by the facilitator what she liked to do for fun. The question threw her for a loop, as if she had never been asked the question before. But after some thought, she said she liked to clean out closets if given enough time.

Most of my coworkers had question marks on their faces, but I held affinity. After all, a completed task had a more lasting refrain than waking up to a bone-crushing headache after a night of partying.

Still, Karleen could be judgmental, especially with those who were not on the straight and narrow. She even had a word for some of these derelicts – dorks. Everyone who did not live up to a certain standard was a dork and she used the word constantly. Dork! Dork! Dorkity Dork!

One day one of my coworkers asked Karleen if she knew what dork meant. She did not. She thought it was just another word to describe a nimrod, moron or doofus. She was told that it was originally used to describe the male nether region.

Karlene never used the word again.

 

SCENE FROM CAPITOL HILL

SENATOR TESTER: Come on. I didn’t say f-ing.

SENATOR KLOBUCHAR: Oh no, you said f-ing.

SENATOR TESTER: G*dd*mnit! I’m trying to wean myself off of this.

 

If you are looking to go see a stand-up comic, I recommend Nate Bargatze. He’s low-key. No impressions. Doesn’t do jokes. The best way I can explain his routine, just imagine you and him sitting on a park bench and he’s complaining about his life, except it is meticulous, the patter, the self-deprecation, the dead-pan views. An hour can go by and you’ll want more. At least I do. And when I get interested in a comic, I like to check to see if I’m in left field or part of the norm. So I was on the internet looking for reviews on The Greatest Average American, but I didn’t get far because I got hung up on the rating.

The comedy special was rated G.

How is that possible? When I think of a G rating, there are two options: Children’s cartoons and nature documentaries like March of the Penguins, although I’m pretty sure some of those Emperor penguins were swearing during the blizzard scene.

Don’t comedians do stand-up so they can spew profanity? Playing it blue is what they call it, night clubs, heavy drinking, no kids, no penguins, an atmosphere built for a mature rating and the best were never shy to amp-up the delivery: Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Sam Kinison and Eddie Murphy.

Not Bargatze. He doesn’t swear. At all. And what surprised me was how completely unaware I was that he didn’t. Even when he told a story about performing at a men’s prison and how one prisoner got up to use the urinal which was right behind Bargatze, a stand of urinals that were chest high so the prisoner could still watch the show.

Not one f-ing (bleep).

*****

One summer our family visited Dad’s brother, John, and his family. One afternoon we piled into the station wagon with our cousins, Wendy, Hannah, Molly and Joe and headed to an amusement center. And as Dad pulled into the parking lot, he read one of the signs that described the mini golf course.

“Seventy-two holes,” he exclaimed.

To us the number was unfathomable. We were going to be there forever and we could barely contain our excitement, especially Joe who was only five years old. Still, he had the perfect response. It was concise, to the point, and best described how we all felt.

From the back seat we heard, “Holy Sh*t!”