Damien Galeone

“Oh, for the f*cking f*ckers f*ck f*ck of f*cking f*ckerville!”

It’s at this moment that I remember that I am not alone. There are seven sets of eyes on me.

Letting loose a few curses is fine, especially when you’ve just dropped a hot dog and run over your pinkie toe with your office chair at the same moment. Doing this in a departmental meeting is another story.

Always a genius at covering my tracks, I say, “Uh, you were saying.”

I have a potty mouth. This can be attributed to many factors. First of all, my dad was never one to, uh, hold back his anger in moments of acute strife. I have a very clear memory video of him trying to put in a ceiling fan. And failing. Spectacularly. The tangible quilt of obscenities that sprung from his mouth over that half hour would have made a Tarantino film look like an episode of Sesame Street.

Cursing became my go-to demonstration of frustration and displeasure.

I remember my first foray into the world of cursing. At age four sitting on a table while my dad tied my shoe, I looked at him and said, distinctly, “Hey dad, f*ck it.” What happened next is still vague, but nevertheless, my fascination with vulgarity had begun.

Second, I grew up in the city of Philadelphia and in a house of potty mouthed sports fans. Being a sports fan usually means you’re going to let slip a few ‘what the f*cks’ or a ‘clean the sh*t out of your eyes, ref!’ from time to time. But being a sports fan in Philadelphia means that you curse. A lot. We are to cursing what Mahatma Gandhi was to peaceful protest. Also, there is nothing more susceptible to the negative laws of chance or bad luck than a Philadelphia sports team. If Philly sports’ karma were occupationalized, it would be manually disimpacting ornery seniors.

But that is in the past. I am not in Philadelphia anymore and I don’t have a ceiling fan. Further, having moved to a country where ‘soccer’ is considered a sport that ‘men’ play, I don’t watch sports very often at all. After a few incidents similar to my hot dog chair adventure, I knew that I had to try to turn over a new leaf. Or at least look under that leaf and find some new nouns and adjectives.

It has been tough to rewire thirty-four years of linguistic training. Something bad happens, you curse. Something good happens, you curse. Nothing’s happening, you curse. After nearly having a stroke in the first week from withholding vocal displeasure, I settled on keeping my language clean at work. In the office and in the classroom I am the Mr. Rogers of spoken epithets.

This is good, but confusing for those around me. My colleagues and students understand, d*mn, f*ck, sh*t and c*nt. But they don’t really get “Shabby legged goo-collector” or “duck-tittied ham frogger.”

Moreover, this has contributed to my absolute exhaustion by the end of the day. My brain and mouth have been long trained to fire off a few rotten vulgarities at an almost automatic response time, but now I have to scan my brain for non-vulgarities. At first, when I got home and alone I’d curse at everything in the house. I’d curse at the fruits and vegetables I was cutting for dinner, I’d curse at the windows and the bed.

But, like most things you have to quit, it gets easier. Today I’ve noticed that not only did I not curse, I really didn’t miss it or need it. I leave my veggies alone, deciding that merely cutting them into pieces and eating them is punishment enough without being called names at the same time. While this is a good thing, I feel a bit of my heritage slip away.

Maybe there’s a football game on tonight.