Swear Sisters

I grew up with a lot of hot headed Italian males. It was pretty much normal in our family to have a family gathering disrupted with them yelling swear words at one another around us kids. "Go kiss my ass," they would yell back and forth when they had a disagreement. "Go to hell", was pretty commonplace and maybe a "God damn it" here and there, and definitely many shits!

As animated as the men folk were, I never heard any language stronger than the words above, so compared to today's standards they were pretty tame I think.

I didn't swear too much as a teen-ager. Maybe an "Oh,shit" when I made mistakes, but not much more.

My husband's father is an English gentleman. Never have I heard even a damn come out of his mouth and following suit, my husband doesn't swear either.

Somewhere along the line after marriage and having kids, swearing became more commonplace for me. In reflecting back, I am not sure why. Maybe the stress of life got to me and swearing helped to relieve it? In keeping with family values the F word was NEVER spoken, but those other words above were flying out of my mouth more and more often.

One day when I was visiting with my sister and having a conversation with her, my young son came in and pointed out that we were saying swear words. He dubbed us the "swear sisters." It was funny, but also a wake up call to be more aware of young listening ears.

Today, I do swear more at home and have picked up saying the F word. I watch HBO and all the words are uncensored so it almost becomes natural to say the word when you hear it so often. And you all might remember how funny I think Kathy Griffin is and for sure her language is raunchy. Although my language may be colorful at home, I would never swear any word at all at work. When I told the swear sisters story to my co-workers, none of them could believe it. "Lena, a swear sister? You have got to be kidding me!"

I work in a school with some street wise kids. We hear the F bomb frequently and they lose behavior points for that kind of talk, but it really doesn't stop them from saying it. And although they have consequences for saying it, I sort of wonder how fair that is when the music, movies, and all our popular culture now have the F word ingrained in them. I note that once the kids leave for the day, it isn't uncommon to hear other co-workers using that word amongst one another without skipping a beat.

So the other day, I watched the latest video by Cee Lo Green, called F*** Y**. I thought it was a very clever and funny video. I especially enjoyed how the back up singers got to sing this refrain, "Ain't that some shit?". It made me laugh and I just pictured myself singing back up so sassy and free and giving my co-workers something to talk about!

I guess it isn't too outlandish, being a former swear sister and all!