If you've never met me...don't. But if you have met me, you're probably aware that I'm not exactly a user of the gentlemen's English. I randomly and sometimes without consideration to proper sentence structure, insert a tasty sentence enhancer, as Spongebob's Patrick calls them. So instead of, "Pass me the salt please, Grandma," I might say, "Pass me the damn salt please, Grandma." Might not be proper but she's sure as hell not gonna drag her feet passing me anything ever again. But therein lies the problem. Situations where I find myself sitting down in a fancy eatery probably aren't the same situations where I can call my dinner companion an asshole at the top of my lungs, as I frequently am wont to do. According to some it's not nice. Apparently it's not proper. But why?
Welcome back. But seriously, why? I scoured the known internets looking (and if anybody who reads this scours and actually finds something, I was drunk when I scoured so...) for some goddamn reason that if I would have said goddamn reason in a room full of grown-ass people, more than half of them would have looked at me like I just adopted a box of newborn kittens and then sold them to a butcher...not because he wanted to own a dozen cats but because of the eating of them...possibly after wrapping them in bacon. Yeah, like that face you just made, exactly! Why are there words that exist in language that make people turn their noses up at you in disgust? They're just words, right? Why is the word shit any different than the word poop? The only thing I could find resembling anything close to an answer about this ridiculousness is that, apparently, Social Norms dictate swears. I'd like to meet this social Norm/Norms and ask what their problem is with my dirty mouth. I'd like to imagine the Society of Social Norms meeting in school gym, dressed like the Women's Temperance Unions of the 20's, complaining about how they heard someone say H-E-double hockey sticks. I point out the women part because it's hard to imagine a man there unless his wife dragged him there under threat of taking away his Monday Night Football.
Don't get me wrong, when I'm in a public place and I hear some street-tough high schoolers dropping the f-bomb every twelve seconds, even I think that's unnecessary. I'm not saying that I walk onto a crowded playground every day and let out a string of expletives that would make Tarantino cry in his milk, but when I'm out and about, I like to, you know, speak like an adult. If I say ass instead of butt or damn instead of doggoneit, what is the big deal? They are all just words. It's just that some stuck up priss got his/her feelings all hurt for no good reason, which seems to be the norm in America these days, and decided there were things their baby ears couldn't hear. Well, shit, is one of my favorite words, has been since I've been able to talk. I also love the word poop, and if you wanna know why, say it aloud to yourself or write it down. I dare you not to laugh. Shit and poop are the same word. At the end of the day, they mean the same exact thing. But, children can say and hear poop. If they hear or say shit, they get to see Santa gunned down in front of them. Who decided this!?
And it isn't just swear words that are taboo. Some of the words that sometimes find their way into my vocabulary and have been there for a long time, aren't even swear words. Some are words that are used to describe certain groups of people in this day and age and those groups of people find those words offensive. The silly thing about most of these words is that they have several different definitions and only recently became 'offensive' slang. Words like retard and fag and gay, words that, used in the right situation, are perfectly harmless to say. Back in my day, you really didn't get in trouble if you said, 'that math assignment was gay', because in most instances, math was and is gay. Gay as in stupid, not gay as in homosexual. I think my generation was in a race to get in Guinness for Most Words That Mean the Same As Stupid. I can understand that when said in a derogatory way against a person, they can get offensive. It's the context, right? Yeah, I bet that if I was in a crowded room and said, 'Quick, someone retard the growth of that hibiscus!' or 'Someone throw another faggot on the fire!' I wouldn't get away with it. Someone in that room wouldn't know that retard means slow and faggot means bundle of sticks. Someone would have a fake conniption fit and I say fake because at the end of the day, most people who get offended by derogatory words are just doing it because it makes them feel like a good person...which usually makes you a selfish, terrible person.
I guess I can understand the snafu over derogatory words being used but I guess I'm just the kind of person that would never call a mentally challenged person retarded as an insult just like I would never call a fat person fat as an insult. Just gave myself a little brown nose there, didn't I? I would call an asshole retarded, though. It's definitely all about context, it's just too bad that good citizens don't have the wherewithal to think more than five seconds before they jump to shit on everyone else's fun. I know that young minds are being taught these words and the wrong ways to use them, but young minds can first be taught to be good people you know, by their parents, instead of by some random stranger they overheard saying fag in the mall.
If we're gonna start making it socially unacceptable to say some of these words because human beings just can't help themselves, then every word that has ever been incorrectly used to insult someone has to go too. So a short list would be: white, black, Asian, girl, lesbian, Jewish, cracker...do I have to go on? My solution is, instead of writing a list on your child's brain of words that are naughty and will get them sent straight to Satan, we send the entire population of the world through an extensive training course on quote/unquote bad word usage and context. It would cost uber-billions of dollars but when I'm in public around a lot of worried-about-everyone-else-cause-Jesus-said-to mothers, I want to call math retarded and I want the mothers to go, "that's true, it is stupid!" Cause it is! Why isn't anyone thinking of me in this situation? Anyone? And let's stop on this warm holiday to thank and bless the MPAA and the FCC just a little bit. If it wasn't for them, we'd be hearing the fuck and Jesus words in the wrong context on TV and we'd be denied the random, gratuitous violence that barely earns movies a PG these days. Hooray for priorities and Merry Christmas you antiquated dickwads. The 1600s called and they want their Puritan, witch burning ideals back.
