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.