By Sugarman

The other day I met a friend for dinner, and the waitress came over to take our order.  She introduced herself as part of this restaurants SOP (standard operating procedure) and asked us how we were.  We responded that we were fine and politely asked how she was.  We expected the usual “fine” in return and that we would be asked what drinks we’d like to order.  Instead, we were treated to a re-hash of this waitresses’ day which included both boyfriend and car troubles.  Ok, so this might make for a funny little Seinfeld-esque episode, and that would be about it.  Except that this waitress didn’t just sprinkle, she carpet-bombed, curse words throughout her story: “my friggin’ boyfriend”, and “the freakin’ car”, and “then the motherf’er” etc., etc.

At the risk of sounding like a crotchety grandfather, if the above incident was just that, an incident, I wouldn’t be taking the time to write.  But more and more often, I hear (and read) crude language creeping into what used to be polite, everyday conversation.  Whether on the phone, texting or IM’ing, the f-bomb is being used the way we used it in 9^th grade: in almost every other word.  To this day, I have male friends who curse a lot in normal conversation; to the extent that I’m not sure they even know they’re doing it.  One of my friends is a respected attorney and father of a new born son.  The following is an excerpt of a typical conversation, cleaned up for the sake of politesse: 

     “So my freakin’ mom calls, and says she’s coming in for a friggin visit, and my f’ing wife says she’ll be happy to have the freakin’ help with the baby, who’s just now friggin’ teething, but is still the f’ing cutest thing you’ve ever freaking seen.  I’m frigging glad my f’ing mom will get to spend some time with my freaking kid since she lives so far the f away.  Frick.”

This friend curses so easily and frequently, that I wonder how and if he puts a muzzle on himself at work.  I’ve actually made myself laugh picturing him in a high-powered business meeting discussing corporate liability and throwing in f-bombs in between the latin and the legalese…

Its one thing when guys cuss.  It’s a guy thing; learned behavior growing up and watching our dads shoot the bull with their friends.  But these days women are definitely getting in on the act.  And it’s not just cursing.  Women these days are completely unafraid to throw sexual terms into conversation without batting an extra-long eyelash.  I was at a party recently of a friend of a friend’s.  I was talking to two girls I just met that night, both adorable, and one of the girls mentions that she’s going to grab another drink.  I asked if she wouldn’t mind grabbing me one as well.  Jokingly, she said “Sure, and why you’re asking for things, why don’t you just ask me to blow you, too”.   While it would be easy to get side-tracked into if I did indeed and, and get, some mouth love (I didn’t- read on), let’s stay focused.  I was shocked at what she said, but played it off with only a little awkwardness.  And just in case you think she might have said what she said to be flirty, she had a boyfriend who I had met earlier in the evening.  This doesn’t mean that she can’t flirt with me, but I truly think the oral sex reference was a throw-away line to her and meant nothing except that she was trying to make me feel bad about her fetching me a drink.  I guess the key take-away here is that it should be a good thing that women feel empowered enough to curse just as much as men, but it doesn’t feel that way to me.  Or maybe said differently and better, I don’t think cursing is a good way to improve the equality between the genders.  In fact, I think it devalues both genders when they cuss. 

I don’t consider myself a prude, but when I was growing up, my grandfather said that cursing was a sure sign of a poor vocabulary.  Since I take a certain pride in being well-read, I choose to limit my use of cusswords as much as possible.  And if the only downside is that some of my friends think I’m uptight, well, I think it’s a small price to pay.  But I’m swimming up Niagra Falls on this topic.   As cursing creeps more and more into everyday conversation, its only a matter of time until a customer service rep for a cell phone company asks if I want to friggin’ add a family member to my account, or a bank teller asks if I want to deposit some f’in money in my checking or savings account.  Maybe there’s just no such thing as polite conversation anymore…