Comments on: Cussin’ in Context

By: Jeff

Jeff — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 01:39:27 +0000

The genesis of this post is rooted in both the story of my nephew and another story that I didn’t add. One day last week, the Bear came home from school and told me that 2 separate classmates made remarks that HATE and NAKED were both bad words. I found this quite absurd. I tried to imagine parents telling their children that those words, the actual words themselves, are bad. It seems rather lazy to me to tell 6 year old kids that words, especially those that can easily be explained, are bad. Being NAKED in public screaming that you HATE clothing could be considering a bad idea. Maybe that’s what the parents were saying and the kids simply misunderstood. Yeah, that’s probably it.

By: Molly

Molly — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 23:38:02 +0000

Hah hah. With great power comes great responsibility. It might be a little unfair to arm especially young kids with the most adult words before they are able to understand the complexities of “knowing your audience.” ‘Cause the appreciative audience for a toddler dropping f-bombs is a very special one. Also, I’m guessing that 10-year-old had some emotional release in using the word because he knew it was a word of power – power that comes from an awareness of societal taboos. Do we want to water these words down to the point that they give us no pleasure? And do we want the conversation overheard from those early playdates to sound like Tarantino dialogue? Just pondering….

By: GBK Gwyneth

GBK Gwyneth — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 23:10:53 +0000

Damn! I put an apostrophe on “kids”, where it doesn’t belong!

By: Jeff

Jeff — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 22:47:47 +0000

Gwyneth, I like totally like agree like with you. To simply sprinkle f-bombs adjectives as a way of describing everything is inappropriate, more because it makes you sound like a dunce, then because the word is “bad”.