Last year, my son used a permanent marker to express himself by use of the F-word (and others) on the bathroom wall at school. Cursing really made him feel big.

A friend told me that people curse because they have limited vocabularies. She could make a sailor blush. Cursing can be a shortcut. My mom would curse and sometimes it let us know she was playing around. Other times, generally indicated by volume, it was a shortcut to convey her extreme displeasure. Maybe people curse since there is something cathartic in emitting a fully felt curse. I think that my son felt something big–probably a mix of fear and power when he let his go.

My kids learned to curse the way I did, by example, at home. That did limit my cursing vocabulary to my family’s favorites, but college taught me appropriate use of the rest. When my other son was learning to curse I told him that if he wanted to use that word, he should go in the bathroom, shut the door, and say it to his heart’s content. He came out of the bathroom in about 30 seconds. Bored.

A lot of blogs include a lot of cursing. It doesn’t offend me, but I expect that it offends some. Sometimes though, it is just boring. Maybe small vocabularies? I decided not to use these powerful words in my blog. So today, I’ll write about cursing.