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.