I Swear

This is not me taking an oath of office, nor expressing exasperation, as in “I swear, that boy hasn’t the sense God gave a goose!” No, it is a statement: I swear. A lot. And, until now, it never occurred to me to wonder why.

My first realization that I possessed this talent came when I was quite young—eight or nine, or perhaps as young as seven. I know this because by the time I was ten or eleven I felt very grown up, and in this memory, I was still a child. We were playing with the neighbour kids and, apparently confused about what we were doing, I asked, “Can someone tell me what the fork is going on?”

The eldest neighbour girl, perhaps twelve years old, was shocked: “Where did you learn to talk like that?” I had no answer. I shrugged it off, and we continued to play.

But now, sixty-odd years later, it occurs to me to wonder, just where did I learn to talk like that? Mom didn’t swear, and neither did Dad. So where did I come up with all the forks and feathermuckers and sockcutters? And why did I use them with such alacrity? If Dad hit his thumb with a hammer, I’m sure he’d merely grimace, shake it off, and carry on. Although, I have to admit I never saw my father hit his thumb with a hammer—he was a skilled craftsman—whereas I often introduced my thumb to the business end of a hammer, with all the requisite mucking of feathers and cutting of socks you can imagine.

During my Cult Years, the swearing naturally fell off a bit, but after my excommunication, I was back at it. I recall being out with my musician friends after hours one night and them remarking about my swearing. That confused me. Here I was, a relatively clean-cut family man among pot-smoking, coke-sniffing, apprentice alcoholics who would count themselves lucky if they found a vacant couch to sleep on that night, and they were passing judgment on my language? What the fork! What the actual feathermucking fork?

When I moved to England, I brought my vocabulary with me, which I can only imagine was a shock to my bride.* I might have been a consummate swearer, but I instinctively knew when to keep it under wraps. Having met my wife while on a hike with a group of well-heeled adventurers and then living at her parents’ house for the first few weeks of our married life, I wasn’t really able to let go until we got our own place. By then, of course, it was too late. But fortunately, she was so smitten that the forks and feathermuckers didn’t put her off.

At my job, however, I was surprised to find I was the only swearer. Back in the US, I and my coworkers swore up a storm, but here in the UK, I was urged to tidy up my vocabulary. It wasn’t easy. I was talked to about my language, and threatened with a swear-jar on a regular basis. (A threat they, thankfully, did not follow through on, as I would have liked to have some salary left at the end of the month.)

Another shock came after my first book was published. My downstairs neighbour read it, told me she enjoyed it, but followed that up with: “I didn’t know you swore.” It wasn’t that it was remarked on, it was the way it was remarked on, as if she’d said, “I didn’t know you were a Mason,” (I’m not.) I suddenly felt there was some sort of divide. “All normal people over here; all swearers over there.” I didn’t look upon it as a vocation or a hobby. It was more a case of being right-handed; it was simply in my DNA.

I think the reason for this musing is that my swearing is severely curtailed these days. Being at least a bit socially aware, I make a point of not swearing while I am in polite company, and I am in polite company a great deal these days. Choirs, book clubs, singing in the nursing homes and friendship clubs, or volunteering in the café at the local Nature Reserve (“Here’s your forking cappuccino. Want some feathermucking sprinkles on it?”) all keep me in contact with well-heeled portions of the population.

A recent conversation at an after-choir gathering somehow gave me the opportunity to admit to being a swearer. (I didn’t demonstrate, I just mentioned it.) My fellow choristers were shocked, and one opined that he, certainly, did not swear, and considered people who did to have a poor vocabulary and an inability to properly use the English language.

Now, never mind that I have read several articles claiming the opposite, I was in the room, for fork’s sake, sitting right in front of him. I felt like saying, “Yeah, I only wrote twelve forking books so, of course I have a minimal command of the English language.”

As it stands, I mostly confine my swearing to when I am at home, a handy system because I continually talk to myself—a sort of running commentary of my activities; out loud, of course—giving rise to streams-of-consciousness soliloquies such as: “So, what to have for lunch? Cheese and pickle sandwich, yeah that’s the ticket. Oh, fork’s sake, we’re out of Branson’s. Forking heck! Tuna maybe, yeah, that’ll do. I bet it’s got one of those easy-open lids that are bound to slice my feathermucking fingers off. Sure enough, the pop-top of death. You’re looking to kill me, aren’t you, you sockcutter …”

And my wife, from the other room: “Are you talking to me?”

“No. I’m talking to the tuna fish.”

“Oh. Okay, then.”

But she wouldn’t have it any other way. She finds it endearing. I swear.

* It surprises us even now to think that we had spent only nine days in each other’s company before we decided to get married, and a mere five weeks together before the ceremony. You really don’t learn a lot about a person in that short a time.