Lianhua.nu

Rory

I think one of the best things about this Christmas is getting to meet my adorable 11-week-old niece, Lorelai (Rory).

The Glow Worm I got for her was a big hit today! :)



It’s going to be really hard to go back to LA after being around this cuteness.

#@%*$&!

A few days ago, Debi posted an entry about swearing, when she started swearing, how people have reacted to it and how she herself feels about it. Inspired by her post, I started thinking back to when I first started using curse words…

In my family, cursing is reserved for the adults. When kids in the family are really young, it can be really funny to get one of the little ones to say a nursery rhyme with a curse word in it or something (Hickory dickory dock, the mouse ran up the clock; he ran so fast, he skinned his ass, hickory dickory dock). Usually it’s my grandma or my great aunt that’s instigating the little curses, and everyone has a good laugh. But other than that, cursing is a privilege you earn when you reach adulthood.

However, the curse words aren’t hidden away or anything. Both of my parents have a pretty big cursing vocabulary, especially when they’re driving, especially in a city (like LA or New York or Vegas, where they don’t normally drive very much). In fact, whenever we would watch A Christmas Story, the three of us kids loved the line: “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.” It describes our dad pretty well — he has quite a repository and manages to piece them together so creatively that I’ve actually found myself in a kind of dumbfounded awe at some of his choice phrases. I’m not saying he curses all the time, he’s actually pretty good at keeping them tucked away only to use in the midst of epic battles, and I think that’s something that has rubbed off on the three of us (my brother, sister and me) pretty well. Other than the occasional obscenity thrown into the everyday conversation for emphasis, we’re not too foul-mouthed.

I don’t know about my siblings, but, other than the little nursery rhyme curses, I first started cursing in sixth or seventh grade. (By the way, it feels so weird saying that in this blog, knowing that my mom reads it…)

It was a cold winter morning, and I’d been freezing on the bus stop for at least fifteen minutes — the bus was late again. The sun hadn’t even started coming up yet (when I was in middle school my bus ride was 30-45 minutes, and school started at 7:30am… do the math…), so I couldn’t even move to a sunny spot. It was cold. When the bus finally came, I was excited to finally get into some warmth, but quickly realized it wasn’t meant to be. The bus was only a little warmer than the air outside.

My friend, stopmate and seatmate, James, leaned over to me and whispered: “Say a cuss word.”
“What?!” I snapped back.
“It’ll make you feel warmer.”
“I’m not allowed to say those words.”
“Nobody’s going to hear you.”
“The bus driver?” I pointed toward the front of the bus.
James laughed and rolled his eyes, and I turned toward the window. On the other side of the seat, I could hear him whispering to himself, while I was still shivering uncontrollably.

Quietly, gently, I let one little word escape from my lips, and suddenly warmth flooded over my face — the warmth of doing something bad, saying something that could get me into trouble, stepping outside my goody-goody straight-A self to have one little indulgent moment of bad girl.

I giggled to myself and turned to James. “I do feel warmer!”

I then proceeded to let a little flood of obscenities flow from my smiling ‘bad girl’ lips.

“Whoa,” said James. “Don’t overdo it.”

And the rest is history.