At Least One Million Times Per Day

How Much Do You Cuss?

I’ve never really understood the whole “you cuss like a sailor” metaphor. Do sailors cuss a lot? I can’t really believe that being a sailor is the most cuss-worthy profession. I feel like doctors should cuss more than sailors. When a doctor loses a patient or when they have a huge wave of patients all at once, I feel like that’s more dramatic than most of the things that happen on ships.

                I also feel that way about being a student. So many things happen in a day that are definitely cuss-worthy: you drop something heavy on your foot, you get a 23% on a sophomore history test, you realize that you have a math project due today that you haven’t started, you find out that you have to make up 10 hours of tardy service… I feel as though all of those are “fuck!” worthy. Sometimes when I cuss it’s because of one of those things. Most of the time, I cuss because I’m annoyed or feel very strongly on a particular issue. I remember that once a teacher heard me cussing—it’s actually happened way more than once, but I don’t have time or space to write them all down—while in the kitchen. Our Spanish class had been making churros the entire period, and I was the one who had to finish putting them into the grease. There were people all around my wanting a churro—I hadn’t even gotten one myself, yet—and it was making me extremely annoyed. Add in to the mix Martin who kept making jokes about my cooking skills which, although they made me laugh, were also very teasing. I think I ended up dropping at least three f-bombs, used the curse-word equivalent of “female dog” at least twice, and said a series of four letters meaning excrement at least twelve times.

                I also think that my surroundings lend themselves to curse words. Uni is a very liberal school, and my friends are very liberal people. My friends say cuss words almost as much or more than I do—I’m talking about you Martin—and it kind of grows from there. When one person cusses a lot in a conversation, it draws cuss words out of other people for the entirety of the conversation. But don’t be fooled, it’s not just the students. One of my teachers says a word that resembles a cuss word, or even the actual cuss word at least once per class period, and many other teachers hear cuss-words and don’t really care.

                I also think that my age helps. I’m seventeen, and am going to be a legal adult later this year, and as such feel like if I want to say “shit” or “damn” or anything even vaguely relating, I should be able to do so. Those words don’t hurt the people I’m saying them to, so I feel as though they should be acceptable. I’m not using them in a mean or inherently offensive way, and most of the time, if someone doesn’t want to hear them, they can either leave the room or carry on with a different conversation. 

Let Me Live: do you have helicopter parents?

There are a few different types of parents. The helicopter parents, the living-vicariously-through-my-kids parents, the over-protective parents, the terrible parents, and the mixed parents. My parents fall into the mixed parents: helicopter, over-protective, and living vicariously.

When I was younger, before I got my license, my parents had to know everything I was doing and they had to know about it in advance. I remember one day I really wanted to go to my best friend’s house. It was spring and I wanted to walk the block and a half to her house and hang out with her for a few hours. I went to ask my parents and they pointed out two major things to me: planning and details. I needed to plan ahead and decide at least three days in advance when I wanted to do something. The “needed information” or details as I like to call it, was and still is the most annoying part of asking my parents for anything: how are you getting there, when is it, where is it, when do you need to leave, how are you getting home, when are you getting home, do you need to bring anything, who will be there, what will you be doing, etc. I had the answer to only one of those questions, so the answer was decidedly no. As I implied, this is still one of the most annoying and still one of the largest issues I have with my parents. However, the planning part of this isn’t quite as big of a deal to them. Now if I want to go to the mall one day or go out to eat or take a friend to an event that I’m already going to, it’s much more likely that I’ll be able to do it.

Legal curfew for a seventeen year old is 11:00pm. My parents rarely let me out past 10:30. I’m not allowed to go to gas stations after 8:30. I can’t take a shower later than 9:30 because my hair should be mostly dry by my set bedtime at 10:30. Yes, I said bedtime. I’m seventeen years old and I have a bedtime. I can’t go out to lunch on campus during school unless it’s a special occasion. I’m not allowed to drive further than Decatur. My parents have more rules than these, some more ridiculous while others are more standard.

The story that sticks in my mind when thinking about my parents is a recent one. I asked them if I could ask someone to a dance. I had the entire ask planned out. I was going to go buy Dos Reales for him (that was the first place we went to eat together) and write out a sign that said “It’s always a fiesta with you, vv?” I was so excited. I was bursting at the seams to tell them about my plan, and when I did, they said “no.” At first, I was confused. “what do you mean no?” what in the world were they saying no to? “You’re not going to make a big deal out of asking this boy. You guys aren’t even dating. It’s unnecessary.” Things like that happen to me a lot.

It really upsets me that my parents have decided that they have to control a variety of aspects of my life. I’m seventeen years old, I think I can decide when I come home and what time I shower and what time I go to bed and most other things. It’s not as if I’m out doing dangerous things, usually I just want to go to a movie or out for b-dubs with church people. Sadly my parents don’t see it that way. They don’t see me as a person who needs to figure out how to be independent, they see me as a child who can’t make her own decisions.