According to the Parents Research Council, the bleeped f-bomb occurred in 276 TV shows in 2010.
And so it goes with the s-word, which seems to be a multipurpose descriptor, such as, it’s cold as (ahem), or it’s hot as (ahem), or as wet, hard, weird, fat, skinny, smart or dumb as (ahem).
Our swear words, like most cultures, revolve around sex and bodily functions. You can hear them blurted so casually, so mindlessly by folks of all ages that they no longer have any pop, any shock value, any impact.
At a recent sociolinguistics symposium, there was a report that children are swearing at an earlier age and more often than the previous generations.
No shhh . . . no kidding.
It’s all part of the dumbing down of our language. When our forefathers were writing the Constitution, they wrote their derrieres off, wielding 100,000 or more different words.
We might use 10,000 now, once you subtract the curse words.
But this is about more than raising the IQ of your vocabulary.
It’s about having a brighter outlook. Cursing is often subconsciously negative. That’s why when electrodes are hooked to the skin and you hear a sharp expletive, you react.
If you’re a curser like me and you stop, you’ll feel the difference. And I don’t know about you, but I could use a sunnier 2012, daggone it.
So why now. Recently, I was riding home after midnight, 60 miles and hour and a deer jumped out and I missed it by a hair. There was no time to hit the brakes, but I did find time to say Oh ff . . . uh, you know what I mean.
I don’t want those to be my last words.
That’s my take . . .
