Grad Mom's musings: teaching a bon fucking mot

by Kathryn Higgins

Tuesday February 19, 2008

I love that my children aren’t allowed to use bad words, ever. They come home from school bursting with the news if anyone in their class has used a bad word. “Mom, Brendan said ‘shut up’ today,” says eight-year-old Matthew. “Mom, is ‘frickin’ a bad word?” asks my eleven-year-old daughter with concern. This restriction adds drama to our lives.

During my divorce I was accused of being crazy, out of control and bipolar (depending on the situation) because I used the word “motherfucker” when my ex-husband tried to take my kids away from me. If I used the words “fuck” or “asshole,” no matter how appropriately, in an e-mail I was quickly cautioned and reprimanded by my lawyer. Our system of civil law frowns severely on profane language.

No matter that you can find the word “fuck” in The New Yorker almost every week. That “shit,” “asshole,” and “die motherfucker” can be heard on television every day of the week (well, OK, on cable channels, but who needs commercials anyway?).
Recently I found time, between trying to get my kids to finish their homework, make their beds, and get along with each other, to explain to them the irony of language usage in higher education versus elementary school education. “If you would fucking stop hitting each other I will tell you this interesting thing,” I said to them. Once I had their attention, no small feat, I continued: “When you get to college, or grad school like your mom, you will actually be asked to read literature with words like ‘fuck’ and ‘shit’ every day!”

“Really?” they looked at me, eyes wide.

“Yup,” I said, showing them a quote from The New New Journalism, required for my latest class, in which famous, fabulously successful adventurer and author Jon Krakauer eloquently says “Give me a fucking break” on page 169. In the context, his remark makes total sense. Just to be sure they got the point, I then flipped to page 365, in which famous, fabulously successful journalist Gay Talese says “that’s all bullshit.”

“This is required reading for my class,” I told my kids.
Real writers and thinkers do not shy away from strong words like namby-pamby divorce lawyers do. They understand that a strong, startling word is sometimes the best, most appropriate one for the occasion. But, a caution, this only works if you don’t incorporate meaningless profanity into everyday conversation (here I’m referring to the propensity unimaginative people have for inserting gratuitous F-Bombs into bland phrasings like “Let’s go to the fucking 7-11 for some more fucking beer”). It’s this overuse of profanity that ought to cause alarm — it should be saved for the appropriate moment so it packs a bigger punch. A divorce will usually give you an appropriate moment or two. Having kids gives you a few appropriate moments. Driving’s good for some. You give your profanity more rhetorical power if you haven’t been carelessly cursing all day.

One of my professors, a New Yorker editor and writer, mentioned during class that she used expletives, especially in her undergraduate classes, because sometimes she looked around the room and all the students looked tired, and she felt like she had to “wake them up.” Fifteen minutes later, she almost dropped the F-Bomb in our class, “F—excuse me,” she said, getting the benefit of the profanity without actually using it. We laughed; it was a graduate class, after all. We’ve heard the F-Bomb before.

My kids ask me permission to use a bad word when quoting someone, or they spell it out: “he said she was a b – i – t – c – h.” But they chortle with glee when I use one. (Imagine my deftness in maintaining this double standard!) With my selfless guidance, they will not go out to encounter the real world of language with Victorian-style prudishness. Hell, they can already recite “Slouching Towards Bethlehem” because I had to memorize it for Kurt Brown’s poetry class, and that apocalyptic vision is, if anything, more disturbing than the everyday, ordinary “goddamnit!”

And if this gets printed in The Phoenix, I will smugly show it to them, proving my point once again: sometimes a bon mot is a bon fucking mot.