Not a Swearing Man
I am not generally a swearing man.
I don’t have a problem with words like “damn” and “hell”, but that is about the limit for me. Even in sports, where you can get thrown out of a game for not cursing, I didn’t swear much (I think I was permanently traumatized by a 10th grade basketball game where I dropped a pass on the sideline and let lose with an obscenity only to look up and see my mom sitting on the first row of the bleachers only a foot or two away).
Working on the house is a different story.
I don’t know what it is about home improvements that makes me absolutely lose it, but nothing else has quite the effect on me. I am not sure it really counts as swearing. Most of the words that come out are made up (“frungadamunga!”) and the ones that I haven’t invented on the spot are strung together so tightly, in such a steady stream, that they become an unintelligible fix-it incantation.
Today I hung some mini-blinds in a bathroom window. The window was just a little too wide for the blinds so I had to fabricate an angle bracket to extend the mounting bracket on the right side (I have learned from Monster Garage, Monster House, and American Chopper that anytime you so much as look at a piece of metal you are “fabricating”).
The process was not a smooth one, but when I was finished it actually looked perfect. As I sat back to admire my handiwork Adrienne said, “You created two things today, that angle bracket and a beautiful tapestry of obscenities.”
Although I like working on cars and other projects -“cars” and “projects” seem to be synonymous-. I sometimes think it would be convenient, although maybe somewhat styfling to creativity, to just name tools etc. after expletives. Maybe even better would be to use tool or part names as expletives.
I get this way every time I have to drive in Utah.
My dad, the carpenter, took me to work with him one day. I was eight. I don’t think it was “take an eight-year-old kid on to a dangerous work site” day, but I went. After hearing all kinds of new words that I didn’t understand, my dad finally became aware of what I was hearing. He made me sit in the truck the rest of the day.
On another occasion at the worksite, one of the greatest inventors of new combinations of obscenities was framing a roof. He hit his thumb with a full swing of one of those huge framing hammers. Everyone around him flinched, just waiting for the blue streak that would make sailors blush.
With blood streaming from his thumb, he just stood up, made a quarter of a turn, and while making a kind of grunting-shriek, (I think that is written AAAAARGGRGRHHH), he threw down his hammer. It punched a hole through 3/4″ plywood and almost killed a man on the floor below.
He climbed down, taped up his thumb, retreived his hammer, ripped off the ruined plywood, and went back to work without saying a word.
If I had a swearing resume, my educational background section would look something like this:
Weed the Garden Community Collage Major: Gosh Darn Prickles Minor: Stupid Mom, I Wanna Go Swimming GPA: 4.0 Graduated Top of Class
High School Gym Class University-“BS” Degree Major: Bull—- Minor: SOB GPA 4.0 Honors Thesis “Shove it Up Your —“
University of Golf and Tennis Lessons-MS Degree Major: What the F— was That? Thesis: “That was An Ugly ——– Putt”
Special Seminars Attended: “LDS Mission: How to say the “F” word without really swearing.” Certificate of Fetch and Flip Awarded
“Talks with Father: Why He Can Swear and You Can’t” Certificate of Hypocritical Justifications Awarded
“My father worked in profanity the way another artist might work in oils or clay. It was his true medium.” –Ralph, in A Christmas Story
Once, while paddling out on our surfboards in Hawaii, the waves were huge. I had just bobbed up from ducking one wave, about to catch my breath, when my friend, who was in front of me, was knocked back and hit me in the ribs with his pointy head, taking what little air in my lungs out of me. And then the biggest huge wave came and I had to duck under, and I was sure I was facing death by drowning. And the last words that formed in my mind was the eloquent, “Oh, f***…”
repairs = swears
Hair Styles
My LDS fraternity and I were at Lake Powell cliff diving. I was a little scared to take the big jump off the 75 footer. We had parked in the middle of the water next to where we were jumping, where inside the boat was our advisor. He had just returned from a mission as a Mission President. I took that leap of faith off the end, then it happened, like a involuntary muscle movement, “OH S***.”