Dating Jesus

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Dammit! Someone else wrote something on cussing!

July 10, 2009 · 22 Comments

I’d hoped that was my own special topic, but no.

Did any one else grow up with near-swears, like near-beer? Heck? Darn? Shoot?

Categories: Lay down your arms

22 responses so far ↓

  • thekickable // July 10, 2009 at 3:46 pm | Reply

    Um, yes? It’s especially a favorite in Utah, I hear.

    (Did you have to think about this before you wrote it, btw?)

  • Jac // July 10, 2009 at 4:50 pm | Reply

    Oh yeah. I don’t think I ever swore growing up. “Rats”, “Jeeez” and “Dang it” were popular substitutes. There was a time when I was harrassed daily on the schoolbus by a few kids who tried to get me to say the F-word and I wouldn’t. Now I swear a lot silently and a little outloud.

  • leftover // July 10, 2009 at 6:10 pm | Reply

    I can play nasty names. But I’ve been practicing self-restraint…..okay trying to practice self-restraint……okay…I’ve been thinking about trying to practice…a little…self restraint.

  • Sherry // July 10, 2009 at 9:19 pm | Reply

    I grew up in a mixed household. Mom was a “rats, shoot, dang it” kind of person and Dad was an iron worker, ’nuff said? Mom tried to keep our ears pure but Dad could really let loose if he was working on something that didn’t go well.

    I did not swear. Then I went away to nursing school and joined the company of other young ladies who could make a sailor blush! I held my own and perhaps added some of Dad’s more colorful combos to the mix.

    Now my mother at 86 has allowed that she does like a good swear now and then and she figures that I have heard enough by now not to be warped of she lets out a few %#&*% now and again. There is nothing like a well-placed cuss to get your true feelings out!

    • datingjesus // July 10, 2009 at 9:33 pm | Reply

      I believe my Grandma Marrs’ last words were “Oh, shit.” She’d been in the hospital and asked her daughter when she could go home, and her daughter responded that she needed to take care of herself, maybe do physical therapy, and my Grandma answered, “Oh shit.” I think that’s just perfect.

      • Jac // July 10, 2009 at 10:18 pm

        That made me smile. My Grandma (not Nana) loved to use the word shit. Even into her Alzheimer’s years she’d remember to use that word. Once she saw ants congregating and couldn’t remember the word ant, so she just exclaimed look, there’s a whole shithouse full of those things. I think I’ll probably use that word more too in my later years….

      • Cynical Susan // July 10, 2009 at 11:18 pm

        It’s funny that people think that older people become soft and delicate and wouldn’t dream of saying anything harsh or rude.

        Over at the Margaret and Helen blog, the main writer is in her 80s and does not hold back. Occasionally they’ll get a new visitor who is shocked, SHOCKED I TELL YOU, that an older citizen uses such language. For myself, I can’t imagine being dragged over some boundary and suddenly losing Bad Words from my vocabulary any more than I can imagine having blue hair or driving around with my left blinker on all day.

  • datingjesus // July 10, 2009 at 3:49 pm | Reply

    Won’t happen. I’m much happier not-thinking.

  • thekickable // July 10, 2009 at 3:51 pm | Reply

    Did you have to think about that to decide that?

  • datingjesus // July 10, 2009 at 3:53 pm | Reply

    Nope. It just flowed out of me, like air.

  • thekickable // July 10, 2009 at 3:55 pm | Reply

    Or gas.

  • datingjesus // July 11, 2009 at 5:51 am | Reply

    It really kind of fits, doesn’t it? In all kinds of situations.

  • datingjesus // July 11, 2009 at 5:51 am | Reply

    No need for a blinker, Cynical, as your neighbors know you’ll ALWAYS go left. HAHAHHAHA I made a funny.

  • Cynical Susan // July 11, 2009 at 8:40 am | Reply

    Now now — as my math teacher Mr. Bowden frequently said, “never assume.”

  • leftover // July 11, 2009 at 8:57 am | Reply

    I had a law professor that drilled that into me for an entire semester. (…because you make an “ass” out of “u” and “me”….)
    It drove me crazy, but he was right, especially in a research context.

  • datingjesus // July 11, 2009 at 10:12 am | Reply

    …because, as my spouse likes to say, assuming makes an ass of you and me.

    I hate puns.

  • datingjesus // July 11, 2009 at 10:13 am | Reply

    Crap. I wonder if my husband had the same law professor? I thought that was original with him. I shall have to check my husband’s sources from now on…

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