American Life

Dumb-ass


swearing in cartoon

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BIL taught his now six year old son to swear and because he is a man, he tried to hide it from my sister, DNOS. But, as is nearly always the case, his son let the cat off his tongue one day when another driver cut them off in traffic and he hollered out, “Dumb-ass!” DNOS professed shock but I think that is only because he beat her to it. Road rage is part, albeit small, of the glue that holds her marriage to BIL so firmly. After a bit of questioning, she was able to ascertain that her son did indeed learn the offensive word from his dad, and that he was well versed in the lexicon of the profane. When I told Rob this story the first time, he laughed, “Of course he needs to swear. He’ll be a man someday.” And when the subject came up again this last week he made a remark to the effect that swearing is a man thing and perfectly acceptable.

I really don’t swear very much anymore. I made a conscious effort to give it up when I took my first teaching job twenty years ago. My colorful expressions run the gamut of g-rated Disneyesque phrases that convey the intent without offense in addition to making me look like someone’s born-again spinster aunt. Though I occasionally swear, more since Will’s illness and death, I really don’t see the need to swear.

I listen to profanity all day long. I work in a high school after all, and the casual use of the word “fuck” is omnipresent from first bell to last. It never fails to send shivers up my back akin to fingernails on a chalkboard. Though it is a multi-functioning word, as far as usage goes, it always makes me wonder what kind of trailer the person who uttered it was raised in, single or doublewide? And I know exactly how unkind and judgmental a statement that is, but I simply haven’t much faith that someone who can’t come up with a synonym or witty figurative phrase to use in its place is worth the time or effort to educate further.

Canadians, I am told, are pretty foul-mouthed. When I wondered aloud if perhaps this was overstating the fact, I was assured that it wasn’t. Since I have a tendency to adopt the speech patterns of those I hear most (I have acquired quite the drawl since coming to south-central Iowa in fact) I am a bit worried that I might revert to the vocabulary of my younger self.

It’s not that “fuck” is a limited term. It can be used as a noun as in “What the fuck?”. It is a verb. “Stop fucking around and get to work.” An adjective. “Who is that fucking moron?” And an adverb. “I fucking did it all myself.” It can express a strong emotion like anger, “Fuck you!” or a tender romantic one as in “I really want to fuck you.” But, it still just conjures up images of the chain smoking, tattooed parents of the students I first taught on the east side of Des Moines. People who never made it out of middle school themselves and so their greatest ambition for their own children ….graduating the eighth grade….manifested in limos and prom-like attire for the twenty minute ceremony and the cookies and punch reception that followed in a makeshift cafeteria that doubled as the auditorium.

Profanity is really the hallmark of three things: stupidity, laziness and a tendency to be dramatic, and not in a good way. When we give into the casual use of obscene language, we are sanctioning these things.

I must confess that I have carelessly taught my own child a “bad word”. She says “dang-it”. Only very quick and clever damage control after a burst of frustration with a recalcitrant computer one afternoon prevented her from the regular use of a quite similar expression. She says “dang-it” when she is angry or frustrated, and objects that make her angry or frustrated are “dang-it things”. For example “Mommy, these dang-it shoes won’t tie.”

Language can elevate or bury us. So it is my humble opinion that we use care and consideration when speaking and do our best not to be dumb-asses about it.

Diet Coke


Diet Coke Products

Image via Wikipedia

Diet Coke has fallen victim to the latest faux health craze which is that of infusing beverages with supplements. I first noticed this latest “improvement” when I was shopping at Target a week or so ago. A mother and her two young teen daughters stood transfixed in front of the display. A favorite addiction of the semi-calorie conscious was now healthy as well as fat-free. Who could resist such a siren call? Target had cleverly set up the display with single serving bottles to promote sampling. After all just one 16 ounce bottle was not much of a commitment, was it?

 

I remember my first brush with Diet Coke. It was in the student union at Iowa in the fall of 1982. I was a freshman. Diet sodas, in my opinion, were to be devoutly shunned. They recalled forced dieting of days past when I had been systematically starved, weighed and shamed by a variety of the well-meaning from pediatric professionals to the plump next door neighbor whose lawn I mowed. She would bring me this foul tasting diet soda whose grape-fruity saccharin aftertaste could not be improved with any amount of ice.

 

My first encounter with Diet Coke left an equally foul aftertaste though not in my mouth. I had stopped to grab a croissant and a Coke between classes and the very skinny girl behind the counter asked me if I wouldn’t rather have a Diet Coke. Maybe it was her job to push this new product but I remember she practically glowed with the celestial light of the born again when she extolled the wonders of NutraSweet. If only I had been older and wiser, I would have recognized the Stepford glaze reflecting the fluorescent lighting for the demonic possession it was. Instead, I declined, a bit contemptuously, and told her I didn’t think I needed to drink diet. What was the point after all? In my own experience diet drinks were more an indicator of fat rather than a way to take fat off. But the look she gave me was nearly as scathing. Clearly she viewed me as being in need of a sugar intervention.

 

I drank regular Coke that day and for a few weeks longer. It was the subtle pressure of my thinner friends that eventually coerced a conversion out of me. So although I escaped university without “acquiring a taste” for beer or coffee, I graduated with a B.A. in English and a Diet Coke dependency.

 

Not quite twenty-five years later, I am Diet Coke free. The aspartame aftertaste is once again evident to my palate and even the occasional sip curls my tongue. I was amused by the vitamin additives in what is essentially a questionably chemical laden drink. The artificial sweetener is not good for a person’s system regardless of what the FDA might believe. They, after all, were under the leadership of Donald Rumsfeld when they granted the okay for aspartame in absence of any finished studies or research on its effectiveness. The sodium content alone is reason enough not to drink it anyway, but add to that the fact that recent studies have found a link between weight gain and the drinking of diet sodas and you have made a convincing argument for one to “just say no”.

 

It’s not easy to avoid the artificial when it comes to food and drink. When millions of chickens and thousands of pigs can consume what amounts to plastic in their feed and still be deemed safe for human consumption and when it costs more to purchase organic food products than its preservative-laden counterparts, what hope do we really have? I suppose we can settle for vitamin additives in our Diet Coke rather than demand clean water to drink but in the longer run are we better off for having done so?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18507734/site/newsweek/

Nickeled and Dimed: On Not Getting By in America


Jobs With Justice National Workers' Rights Board

Image by Jobs with Justice via Flickr

What provides dignity in the life of a low wage earner is not that different than what allows workers at the high, or even rarefied ends, of the work for pay scale to get up in the morning and brave another day. A sense of accomplishment, the perception that what one does is necessary and appreciated, and the knowledge that at the end of the day you can take care of not only yourself but those who are dependent upon you is inherent in all people. The idea that low-end wage earners are somehow less aware of these things is patronizing. When you make minimum wage, live paycheck to paycheck and never seem to get ahead, your survival is much more in the forefront than the idea that work should “feed your soul”, nurture you in some way, but it is not entirely absent. If not for this, who would work at all?

 

When my husband was still alive and living in the nursing home, I would go and feed him whenever I could. There were never enough aides or nurses, and they would scurry from table to table and feed 3 or more residents at a time. Because I was there so often, I became as invisible as the residents, most of whom were only dimly aware of the conversations of their caregivers and too far gone in various stages of dementia to repeat what they heard anyway. These women (and they were without exception female) ranged in age from high school to their mid to late 30’s. Many had second jobs. Some were attempting, not too successfully, to further their educations. They all had children, and many had childcare problems – mainly that it was expensive and unreliable. They spoke of credit issues, not being able to obtain or the fear of debt collection should they fall behind or if they were already. They had problems maintaining permanent relationships mostly because of the strain that lack of quality time between job and childcare caused. No one slacked, but no one was challenged either. They had standards. They had goals. They didn’t seem, to me, to have a lower level of expectation of fulfillment from their work or their lives in general than I did.

 

As a teacher, I tried to convey to my students a sense of cause and effect. How well you do in school will affect your education and career opportunities in adulthood. I told them that if they wanted to wait tables because they enjoyed the work then great, but if they were doing any kind of work because it was the only kind of work available to them because they lacked education, this shouldn ’t be acceptable to them. I have long suspected that the purpose of our uneven education system is to ensure that the country has a steady supply of workers who have no choice but to keep our 24/7 shopping habits alive and do the cleaning up that most people are blissfully unaware of. I always tried to give every student a level field, made no assumptions about their capabilities, and gave them every chance and then some to advance. In my opinion, success is a virus that if allowed to flourish in one class will spread to others.

 

As a citizen it disturbs me that people can work hard and play by the arbitrarily set rules and still discover that the playing field was never level in the first place. When my husband was diagnosed with a terminal illness, I found myself a reluctant and unwilling participant in the Social Security system and discovered that it’s not very social and not meant to provide much in the way of security. What struck me the most was the dehumanizing aspects that seemed almost purposely designed to ensure a sense of unworthiness, as if my husband’s becoming seriously ill was somehow his fault or mine. There is no safety net in the United States and no will to demand one.