{"id":1070,"date":"2012-11-05T10:33:38","date_gmt":"2012-11-05T09:33:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=1070"},"modified":"2012-11-14T19:20:37","modified_gmt":"2012-11-14T18:20:37","slug":"crse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=1070","title":{"rendered":"C*rse"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"El<\/a>\u201cOh, for the f*cking f*ckers f*ck f*ck of f*cking f*ckerville!\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s at this moment that I remember that I am not alone. There are seven sets of eyes on me.<\/p>\n

Letting loose a few curses is fine, especially when you\u2019ve 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.<\/p>\n

Always a genius at covering my tracks, I say, \u201cUh, you were saying.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Cursing became my go-to demonstration of frustration and displeasure.<\/p>\n

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, \u201cHey dad, f*ck it.\u201d What happened next is still vague, but nevertheless, my fascination with vulgarity had begun.<\/p>\n

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\u2019re going to let slip a few \u2018what the f*cks\u2019 or a \u2018clean the sh*t out of your eyes, ref!\u2019 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\u2019 karma were occupationalized, it would be manually disimpacting ornery seniors.<\/p>\n

But that is in the past. I am not in Philadelphia anymore and I don\u2019t have a ceiling fan. Further, having moved to a country where \u2018soccer\u2019 is considered a sport that \u2018men\u2019 play, I don\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

It has been tough to rewire thirty-four years of linguistic training. Something bad happens, you curse. Something good happens, you curse. Nothing\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019t really get \u201cShabby legged goo-collector\u201d or \u201cduck-tittied ham frogger.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2019d curse at everything in the house. I\u2019d curse at the fruits and vegetables I was cutting for dinner, I\u2019d curse at the windows and the bed.<\/p>\n

But, like most things you have to quit, it gets easier. Today I\u2019ve noticed that not only did I not curse, I really didn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

Maybe there\u2019s a football game on tonight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cOh, for the f*cking f*ckers f*ck f*ck of f*cking f*ckerville!\u201d It\u2019s 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\u2019ve just dropped a hot dog and run over your pinkie toe with your office chair […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s1EvEu-crse","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1070"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1070\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1139,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1070\/revisions\/1139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}