The Five Strands of A Sedentary Empress

I swear

"I swear" 

I was standing at the front of the store, looking out the window, likely wondering how much longer the day would be. That particular store was in a 'well to do' area, with high end boutiques running up and down the street and big, lovely houses jutting off of it. I was used to the clientele with their blinding jewellery and teeth. I was accustomed to designer handbags and shoes that didn't look 'walked in'. The front of the store always had a Mercedes, or a Porsche, or Land Rover parked sloppily in front of it, golden retrievers looking eager from the passenger seat. That store had an almost numbing kind of routine in it, with the Filipino nannies and latte mommies bursting through the doors just at they would open in the morning, to the high-powered mothers who would rush in at the lunch time, hurling instructions, waving distractedly to salespeople for help before dismissing them entirely once they got it. Then, toward the end of the day were the 'crazy' ones, the people with too much money and nothing to fill the lost hours, the ones who either walked in because they had nothing better to do or because they needed the quiet and the anonymity of the looming darkness and a semi-empty store. Sue was one of those. She was (apparently) a well-off lawyer, with auburn hair and chocolate coloured eyes, and her uniform was a polo shirt with an upturned collar and a pair of khaki pants. She often had armfuls of bags of merchandise with crinkled receipts trailing from them, looking to exchange or return everything she'd bought the day before and if the item was marked down, she'd angle to get the price adjustment, even if she was past the grace period. She seemed nuts to us, but what made her presence even more disturbing was her eight-year-old son, Eli. The devil incarnate. A bad attitude with an Eddie Munster haircut.

One day, Eli walked in behind his mother and his face betrayed a particularly mischievous frame of mind. He looked at me and dismissed me almost immediately, and then his eyes fell on Martha, my heavily pregnant greeter who stood by the front of the store, folding shirts.

'Hi," he grinned at her.

'Well, hello there!' she responded sweetly.

'So,' Eli looked her up and down a few times before leaning lazily on a fixture, 'looks to me like someone's been f*cked recently.'

To say that we were shocked doesn't really cover it. Martha actually went a little white and had to remove herself from the area, while I just stood there, mouth open, speechless. He had said a little more but neither Martha or I could digest it. After a few seconds of bewilderment, I became the manager again and I approached Sue to tell her what her son had said. The one problem, though, is that I very rarely swear. That word stopped me, and I had to say something like 'effed' which made me feel ridiculous. Sue, though, was incredulous. Her boy wouldn't say something like that, I was mistaken. No, Sue, I argued, he truly said it, and if you don't speak to him about it now, I'll have to ask you to leave the store.

I don't remember what happened after that. I'm thinking she might have pretended to scold him and continued on with what she was doing, or something to that effect, but eventually, for other reasons, she was formally disinvited from returning to our store, anyway. I sometimes think of Eli these many years on, wondering if he's in prison or if he's ever been beaten severely. He must be in his twenties now. I don't know what became of Sue, either.

I don't have what it takes to tolerate foul-mouthed children and I'd be a wrong fit in the teaching profession for that reason. I lack patience and understanding about what makes a child act out, more often believing that they have self-control and that they choose to behave unfavourably. In cases of some kind of learning disorder or mental affliction, I'm obviously more tolerant, but in my experience, the kids with the dirty minds and mouths were mostly from families with distant, incompetent parents.

Take my former brother-in-law, D. He was eleven when I began dating R., and he was a difficult child, at best. He'd throw the expletives around without hesitation, and his parents seemed to ignore it, occasionally giving warning glances or in extreme situations the father would bellow so that the kid would finally realize he'd hit the limit. While R. sometimes swore himself, he didn't use the words often, so it made me wonder where the difference was, why one child was let to do it while the other one rarely felt the need. Then, it dawned on me: it mattered who they were with.

Like I said, I don't swear, not often. My reasoning for it is simple: it sounds common and it lacks dignity. This does not mean I don't think colourful words to myself at least twenty times a day. Oh, I do, but saying it out loud takes away from what the words are intended to do, which is to stop people. Like Cappucine wrote, the words lose power when used too often or in an unimaginative way. It is a way of dumbing down, a shortcut to thinking, and frankly, it sounds stupid. The reason Eli, the devil child from yesteryear, was able to floor me and my co-worker was because of the context of the situation. He was a little kid, speaking to a glowing, radiant pregnant lady. It was every kind of wrong, and I'll probably always remember it.

My bro-in-law D. was often dismissed as being 'hyperactive' or 'wired' from the sugar he ingested, but I watched him closely, and I began to see some things. One, he used to spend time with the elderly couple around the corner and he never used derogatory terms in their presence, which meant that he had control and a sense of respect for the rules of other people when they were enforced. Two, the 'sugar' he ate was given to him by his parents, and if they didn't want him to act a fool, they'd have been a little more involved in limiting the amount of garbage that he ate. I don't know if I buy the 'sugar factor' anyway, to be honest. To me, the kid had dismissive parents, end of story.

Since I wasn't one for swearing, R. kept it to a minimum. It wasn't part of our communication style, unless one of us was really angry and needed to drill a point. M's the same way, rarely using foul language unless he hurts himself or if we have a heated argument at which point I leave the room and refuse to speak until civility returns.

So, why am I like this? My mother has the mouth of a longshoreman, always has. I was raised with curse words as nouns, adjectives and verbs, either shout out or laughed out. She used to stop short of using the 'worst' words, though. She knew enough to keep those horded in her cache until she whipped them out for show. Even now, I have to remind her that children are in the room once she gets going on one of her tirades, and this past summer, she actually yelled at me that I was in 'her goddamn house, and if she wanted to talk that way she'd do as she pleased.' Okay, I'd replied, only, your granddaughter will never visit here again if you don't learn a little respect for other people, understand? It didn't go over so well, but I didn't care. Children are too innocent for the stupidity of their elders. They don't need to learn it before they can pronounce proper words, I think.

Maybe the idea of being 'a lady' has rubbed off on me and left a lasting impression. Once, a boy told me on the phone that one of the reasons he liked me so much was because I was so 'ladylike', that I didn't use foul language and that he thought that was cool. This surprised me given that he was sort of a thug and regularly used salty words in his conversations, but since then, I've noticed that when I do break out the acidic lingo there is visible discomfort in the faces of those I aim it at. I told M. that he was a f*cking a**hole a while ago, and he looked wounded by it, immediately calming down and taking my arm to centre me again. He didn't want to hear me speak like that, he'd said, even though he does on occasion. It was weird, his reaction, because he looked jolted, saddened and frightened all at once. Seeing this in him just because I uttered a few throwaway words is a powerful thing. Because I rarely unleash the fork-tongued beast within, the level of offensiveness I achieve will always be higher than the potty-mouth next to me. This gives me the feeling of being something of a herculean linguist, and I kind of like it.

I wrote a story a while back, and I ended with an almighty 'F*CK!' I don't know why, I guess I was feeling it. M. read it and pleaded with me to change it. It's not you, he said with certainty. So, I changed it because in the end, he was right. One should never include it in anything for shock value because if you don't mean it, if it doesn't fit the occasion, it comes off cheap and puerile.

It doesn't make me a priss, whatever that is, just because I'm selective about what I want to say and hear. I just have standards, and they're a little different than those of the people I have around me. There is a time and place for everything, and I leave it up to every individual to have the smarts to make the right choice for them, but for me, the people I respect the most are the ones who put a little thought into what they're saying. If you use slang or abhorrent words in a job interview then you won't get the job, especially if I'm the one interviewing you. But, if you use it with style, punctuate a great joke with it, no one will laugh harder than me.

It's all about finesse, you see, all about the timing.