Friday, February 20, 2009

A Progression of Swearing

I hope this doesn't get too personal and freak you guys out. Just a disclaimer there to start. When I was growing up, swearing was not ok. You would get your mouth washed out with soap if you even said crap. That became ok and metriculated (is that how you spell that?) into my daily usage sometime around fourth or fifth grade and my parents as well as we grew up and my little brother was too little (we thought) to understand. Hearing my dad swear was a huge surprise and we knew we were in trouble and my mom swore even less often, meaning basically never.

When I got into fifth grade, I developed a bad swearing habit. I basically sounded like a sailor whenever I talked and didn't hesitate to call my classmates the 'b' word or anything else (though I never said the 'f' word). I think at this point I've realized some of the reasons why this came about, but that's a different story. This habit continued in sixth and seventh grade. Then I started growing up. I started caring about the church and the commandments and all of that important stuff. I started realizing how significant everything was and I stopped swearing. I abhorred even the thought of swearing (though I still struggled to remove those words from the vocabulary of my mind as I thought).

Right about this time, my father's swearing in general became more frequent and more prevalent and has since continued to my mother (though she's not near as bad). Now it seems like my dad can barely go one sentence without using a swear word. Throughout high school I continued to refuse to swear, not even saying things like 'piss.'

Then I came to college. Last year I was pretty good and it shocked me when my room mates swore singing along to a song! Somehow, somewhere, I lost all of that. The summertime brought 'piss' into my vocabulary and fall brought 'douche bag'. You know from my New Year's resolutions post that I'm trying to get rid of those two, but there is a whole different problem I'm facing. I seriously am asking for help here. I have become generally satisfied and not shocked by swearing. In songs (and I sometimes sing along but only to hell), and when my friends and family say it. Last night I said hell in a context I didn't really like to refer to a character in a show's surprise. I'm working on it, but is there any way to restore this sensitivity? I miss it now that it's gone.


I hope I haven't offended anyone by the content or context of this post. It was in no way intended to. I'm also not trying to come off as self-righteous.

2 comments:

Valerie said...

Prayer. Pray for strength.

Rubber band on your wrist. Every time you swear you flip it... HARD!!

Swear money jar: put a quarter in every time you swear and then you have to find something unpleasant to do with it.

That's what I can think of for now. I, myself, go in swearing spurts. This week I'm trying really hard to keep my mouth clean. When I almost said the "B word" in front of my Stake President, I realized I was having a problem. Good luck!!

ginger said...

thank you! all of these suggestions are awesome. i think a combination of a rubber band and prayer ought to do the trick :) I hope...