Censorship
As my language became salty early on in my life, (you can’t work in the steel mills without learning a few things) I am capable of blistering paint, if need be.
Around my daughter, however, I still censor myself. Oh, it’s not like she won’t learn those words, I’m sure she already knows more than I do- but it’s not my style.
it wasn’t dad’s style either, he never used an off color word anywhere near my mother or sister, nor me until I was about twenty.
I know how hard it must have been, in retrospect, but at the time I just thought he was incapable of operating the english language.
I remember dad working on our old Comet. it was red, and rusty as hell, but it ran like a top. it had lost a rear wheel bearing and dad had it up on an assortment of blocks and bricks as he sweated off the old bearing and beat a new one on with a piece of copper grounding rod.
I sat and watched him intently, and he put on quite the performance. Lacking the resources to have someone install a $3 bearing, he did it himself, though it took him the better part of a saturday and he probably hurt for a week afterwards.
At one point, after having hit himself on the meaty part of the hand for the fourteenth time, he leaned on the car, which fell off the bricks it was teetering on, pouring oil all over his toolbox and spilling his beer, he exclaimed “Gott… (looking at me he stopped himself).. blast…. you son of…. da…. (starting the words or phrases and being unable to finish them)hey, why don’t you go see if mom needs any help with dinner?” Knowing full well mom needs help with dinner about as much as monkeys need help flinging poo, I took the hint and vacated the premesis, wherupon Dad (once I got out of earshot) tore into the car, the toolbox, the oil, the axle, the bearing, the beer, the sun, the moon, the stars, and the planets, calling them everything in the book and a few things he made up besides, removing the remains of the paint from the left rear quarter panel.
he did get the bearing in, anyway. And we drove that car for another several years, thousands of miles.
10 comments Og | Uncategorized
My father was somewhat free with his language, when it was just him and I. Enter a stranger, and he changed gears.
Lots of memories. Wish he was alive today…. much I wish I could ask him about.
The Colonel had a similar style. Which, gruss Gott, I got the chance to tell him was appreciated later in my life.
I remember a similar incident in which he dropped a transmission on his nose.
There was a blue streak added to the paint job of the Road Runner that day.
M
You never appreciate it until you’re on the other side of it, I’ll tell you!
Your blog is a damn fine read.
My Dad (merchant seaman, Marine, dock worker, more jobs than I can count) had a way with words. He used to say he could swear for twenty minutes straight in seven languages and never use the same word twice. I learned well too, I recall once when I was with an old girlfriend, I banged the back of my head, hard, on the car while getting out. I think I said eleven words, seven were profane, and the ones that weren’t were “mother” and “son of a”.
Man, I wish I could swear. Sometimes it seems like there aren’t words bad enough.
I learned to cuss from listening to Dad around the hog lot. He never said the F word though. Lots of GD’s though. When I was a teenager, I let out a string of cuss words and we just went on our way with the understanding that we wouldn’t cuss in front of Mom. And that worked for us. The cussing in the hog lot stayed in the hog lot.
The tool that got flung the hardest or was the object of the most rage was called the dammit tool in the days of my youth. One time the dammit tool ended up in the sump at the service station I worked at. The sump in a service station is second only to a septic tank. Sometimes.
Censoring ourselves around the youngsters is really not about fear of teaching them something new – it’s more about teaching them about respect. Respect for ourselves and respect for others.
Never, ever in front of Mom or women, ever.