Watch Your Blankety Blank Language

By James L. Davis

I am not a man who likes to cuss. You’ll notice I did not say that I am a man not prone to cuss, because I am a man prone to cuss. I just don’t like it. But like it or not, sometimes my mouth will form a cuss word or two and spit them out before I can stop it, usually when I am trying to get something working again that has inexplicably stopped working.

“Well, why won’t you blankety blank blank…” my mouth will say and I will find myself shocked, totally shocked to hear the words leap past my lips. Of course my look of shock is nothing compared to my children’s look of shock, which involves wide eyes, gaping mouths and pointing fingers followed by the chant “You swore, Dad, you swore, I can’t believe you swore. Dad, you swore” repeated until I swear again.

It turns out that cussing runs in my family, just like our addiction to Pepsi. I inherited my cussing from my dad. When my mom told me this I thought it was strange because I do not recall having heard my dad cuss a great deal when I was young, but apparently he was considered one of the greatest colorful speakers of his age when growing up in the woods of North Carolina. It seems he reached the pinnacle of his cussing career as a small boy of not much more than 6 or 7 when he asked if he could go to work with his dad and was told no. My dad did not care for this answer in the least and so he stood up on the fence post of the corral and proceeded to pelt my grandfather with so many cuss words used in so many varied and colorful ways that even the pigs and chickens began to blush and turn away. My grandfather could not stop laughing long enough to punish his young son, but I guess my grandmother could and when she heard of the cussing my dad had given his dad she took care of the problem. I’m not entirely sure what she did to take care of the problem, but it must have worked because my dad hasn't had too many cuss words slip out of his mouth since then.

But I have. As a boy I used to practice cussing safely out of hearing range from my mom and dad. I would load my mouth with a cuss or two and let them roll around on my tongue, trying out the feel of them before letting them spit out “blankety blank,” I would say to myself, feeling somehow much more grown up because I had cussed. I even replayed conversations I had earlier in the day, only this time sprinkling the conversation with a cuss word or two to give it more flavor. “Why yes mam, I did do my blank homework, thank you very blankety blank much for asking.”

While I would practice my cussing in private  safely out of earshot of anyone who might take a belt to my hindquarters, I did not ever recall sharing my colorful speech with anyone until I became an adult. Then I joined the military. While some people might consider a cuss word or two to be punctuation marks in the spoken word, in the military cuss words are quite often used to fill the spaces between words, because the military abhors unused spaces. I learned this first from my drill instructor and then from every commanding officer I ever had.

“Airman blankety Davis! What blank is blankety wrong blank with blankety you?” I had this question asked of me more times in my military career than I have ever had any question asked of me in my entire life.

At first I tried to answer the blankety blank question sincerely, but I soon learned that it was a rhetorical question, there was no real answer to what was wrong with Airman Davis.

“Sir!” I learned to reply. “I blankety have blankety no blankety idea blankety what blank is blank wrong blankety with blank me, blan­kety sir!”

After eight years in the military my language was at times so peppered with cuss words that all I did was cuss and by the time I got through cussing I had forgotten what I was actually going to say. So I cussed and started over. It took me almost 10 years to work the cussing out of my vocabulary and as my children will gladly point out, I still cuss from time to time, but it is back to being the exclamation mark of my spoken word, not the filler between the words.

Of course, in my opinion my children cuss as well, even though they will argue the fact. They just use different words than I ever did. While my cuss words are easily identified as cuss words, theirs are a little harder to recognize  They sound an awful lot like the cuss words of old, they've just swapped out a letter here or there. So while I will cuss, “blankety blank blank” they will cuss “blinkety blink blink.” I have no idea what the real difference is, but apparently my kids feel that saying “blinkety blink” is not nearly as horrifying as saying “blankety blank.”

My wife, who doesn’t say blankety blank or blinkety blink, has informed all of us that she is tired of all of the blankety blink blink language in our house and if it doesn't stop soon she is going to take matters into her own hands.

    I think she’s talked to my dad and found out how his mom got him to quit cussing, so I think it’s in our best interests to stop all of the blankety blank blink blink cussing…and soon.