Childhood

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.

Rehearsal


dance recital

Image by CR Artist via Flickr

My daughter has her first dance recital this Friday. I took her to the dress rehearsal at a nearby high school this evening. It is the kind of thing a normal parent does, reminding me once again that I am a normal parent and my daughter is a normal child. It’s is just circumstances that make me feel as though we are out of place. The fact is though that she and I were hardly the only two who came in a pair tonight. There were very few matched sets of parents in the auditorium watching the various groups struggle through the hurried up practices. It was mostly moms and daughters who smiled and laughed and shared this ritual, one of the many, that goes along with growing up.

 

Dee was so excited and crouched with her best friend, Riley, on the top step of the stage I felt a pang of guilt when I realized that this was something the two of them would not experience together again. They have known each other since they were babies. Best friends since they could walk. It brought tears to my eyes to watch them dance across the stage together and miss their cues because they were too busy comparing bug bites on their legs or giggling about something that is only funny if you are four…….and best friends. They hugged good-bye when their rehearsal was through. All smiles. They would see each other in the morning before school began and play together at recess. And I wondered what the scene might look like in a few weeks when good-bye would be longer than just the summer, and how I would deal with the tears that would come later this summer when Dee realizes the fall will bring a new school without familiar faces. Without her best friend, Riley.

 

Tonight was just a rehearsal. One of the many you have in life.

 

 

Growing Up Catholic


Stained glass at St John the Baptist's Anglica...

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So, even though I spent fifteen minutes on the phone tonight reassuring my mom that vegetarianism and Easter dinner is not a recipe for disaster, it only just occurred to me that it is Holy Week. I hated Holy Week when I was growing up. It meant going to church on a day that wasn’t Sunday, like protestants do, and masses that were longer than 30 minutes, a practically unheard of thing when I was a child.

 

It started with reading the Passion ensemble style on Palm Sunday. The longest freaking mass of the year, and you spent at least half of it on your feet. No slouching. No leaning. Back straight. Missile open. Attention paid. Not that I was ever paying attention. My favorite place to hide when I was a child was deep inside my head where I had many stories to occupy me when the world around me was too intense, or in the case of mass or school, too pointless.

 

 

In school that week we had prayer services and did the stations of the cross everyday. As often as I have done them, the stations, I still don’t know them by heart. Not like a Hail Mary or the responses during the consecration which come back unbidden and  virtually word for word no matter how many years it has been.

 

Thursday night, we went to mass to watch Father wash feet and to read yet another version of the Passion. There are four gospels you know.

 

Friday. Stations of the Cross. This time in a packed church in the middle of the day. The consecrated host was taken from the altar and the tabernacle draped to indicate Jesus’ death. Fun times.

 

Saturday night. Mass again and since there couldn’t be a consecration, no resurrection yet, you would think it wouldn’t take as long. You’d be wrong.

 

Sunday morning mass, the day of the Resurrection of God’s only son made flesh, was actually the shortest mass of the week. It was like a reward for having made it through Holy Week boot camp. The gospel was about Mary Magdalene finding the tomb empty and running to fetch the apostles. It was always interesting to me that Jesus appeared to Mary first. Didn’t that make her important? The answer to that is no. Mary was a woman. My Irish Catholic view of the world told me that women ruled it, but in the Catholic church, we ran and fetched. God only loved us second best and even that was predicated on our shunning birth control in favor of Kennedyesque broods or taking the veil.

 

Easter was crammed full of rituals I detested. Lent with its fasting and meaningless deprivation. Confession. The sisters made us go once a week during Lent. We were children. At some point over the course of forty days, we had to start making up sins. And of course, there were the endless hours of rosary my dad would insist we recite every night after the dishes were done. Praying as a family was something the church encouraged although I didn’t notice it making my family a happier group of people.

 

The last Easter Sunday mass I attended was with Will the spring before we got married. We had to sit in the overflow because everyone who was ever even nominally Catholic goes to mass on Easter Sunday. I remember he thought we spent an awful lot of time on our feet and knees, and why were there seats if we weren’t going to use them? Sometimes I wonder if I am making a mistake by not raising my daughter in the faith. It certainly shaped who I am in some ways.

Maybe that is why.